Trump continues to push nonsensical and dangerously deranged conspiracy theories about the election. His conspiracy theories make him sound stunningly willfully ignorant of the political and electoral processes that are at work around him. During a Wednesday hearing in Pennsylvania about the election results, Trump called in, claiming that post-Election Day changes to vote tallies in Biden’s favor are automatically dubious because of their timing — which is wildly ignorant. Authorities have long spent awhile after Election Day counting ballots, and the Democratic tilt of many mail-in ballots — many of which were counted after Election Day — is not a mystery. Donald Trump himself spent months complaining about mail-in voting prior to Election Day, and his supporters listened.
During the Pennsylvania hearing, Trump said, in part, as follows:
‘This was an election that we won easily. We won it by a lot… This election was rigged, and we can’t let that happen. We can’t let it happen for our country, and this election has to be turned around, because we won Pennsylvania by a lot, and we won all of these swing states by a lot. Anybody watching television the night of the election was saying wow — I was called by the biggest political people: congratulations, sir, on a big win. And all of a sudden, ballots were dumped all over the place, and a lot of horrible things happened.’
"This was an election that we won easily. We won it by a lot," Trump lies during the Pennsylvania hearing. "This election was rigged … we won all of these swing states by a lot." pic.twitter.com/IHJgHpk1NA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 25, 2020
The total disconnection of Trump’s comments from meaningful truth feels difficult to overstate. He’s unequivocally wrong. The election was not “rigged,” and ballots were not “dumped” — they were counted! The ballots are there. Republican observers (contrary to the president’s claims of systematic GOP exclusion) watched the tabulation process. Also — odds are, those “biggest political people” who supposedly called to congratulate Trump for winning even though many votes remained to be counted were likely already Trump sycophants.
Subsequently, Trump claimed that “we have many, many cases” of voters arriving at polling places and finding that (ostensibly fraudulent) ballots had already been cast in their names. There’s no meaningful evidence for this claim. Trump also pointed out that this time around, his campaign got more votes than Ronald Reagan did when he swept the country and won 49 states — but Reagan was in office decades ago. The U.S. population has increased rather starkly since Reagan was president. As such, numbers of registered voters have also increased. This concept is not complicated.
Later, Trump added the following lie:
‘This election was lost by the Democrats. They cheated. It was a fraudulent election.’
Watch Trump’s unhinged comments below:
"Why wouldn't they overturn the election?" asks the president pic.twitter.com/wGGgJKdBEO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 25, 2020
In order to successfully perpetrate the fraud scheme that Trump and his allies allege unfolded, the fraudsters could have required the cooperation of: county canvassing boards, state canvassing boards, supervisor of elections offices, Secretary of State offices, frontline election workers, observers from both major political parties… and the list goes on. The meaningful evidence for Trump’s claims just is not there.
Trump’s refusal to concede the election doesn’t mean that Joe Biden won’t become president — concession is just a formality. The federal General Services Administration has certified Biden as the president-elect, clearing the way for his team to access federal resources.
