President Donald Trump and his allies continue to talk about fictitious widespread election fraud as an excuse for Trump’s decisive loss in the recent presidential election. Trump has unequivocally claimed on more than one occasion that he won the election, which just isn’t true. This week, he even shared a One America News Network report on Twitter claiming that millions of Trump votes had been “deleted” across the country, which just isn’t true either. The Department of Homeland Security itself has debunked the vote deletion conspiracy, insisting that no such deletion took place — but early Friday, Trump rushed to Twitter to shout about the supposedly “rigged” election anyway.
Notably, as of Friday morning, Trump hadn’t even appeared in public in days — but he sure has kept up the pace of his tweets. He tweeted as follows:
‘For years the Dems have been preaching how unsafe and rigged our elections have been. Now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump Administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever. Actually this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged Election!’
For years the Dems have been preaching how unsafe and rigged our elections have been. Now they are saying what a wonderful job the Trump Administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever. Actually this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged Election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2020
Unsurprisingly, the president is misrepresenting the truth. Trump might have concerns about Russian interference in mind with his claim that Democrats have been “preaching” about how “unsafe” that U.S. elections have been, but that description doesn’t reflect reality. Russia has not been alleged to have altered vote totals in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. In reality, Russian operatives provided de facto assistance to the Trump campaign in the form of stolen Democratic emails that they spread through sources like WikiLeaks. The two issues are distinct.
As for his claim that Democrats are crediting the Trump Administration with doing a “wonderful job” to ensure that the 2020 election was “the most secure election ever” — this characterization doesn’t quite reflect reality either. It’s a group at the Department of Homeland Security in Trump’s own administration who recently said in a public statement that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history. In that same statement, the members of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee said that there’s “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.” That’s an unequivocal rejection of Trump’s fraud allegations.
Check out Twitter’s response below:
