Former President Donald Trump made an appearance at this year’s Dallas edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where — as he’s been doing for months — he belligerently lied about the integrity of last year’s presidential election. Does he seriously believe that election authorities from more than one level of government in every single state were either in on or hoodwinked by a nationwide scheme to somehow rig the election for Biden? What about the dozens of court defeats dealt against cases claiming that systematic election fraud was present? Were judges in on it too? How utterly detached from reality really is the former president?
Trump's CPAC speech yesterday was untethered to reality. His claims about the 2020 election ranged from vague and wrong to detailed and wrong.
There is nothing much new to say, I know, but here is a brief fact check on some of the numerous election lies: https://t.co/DKt9hIYWdH
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 12, 2021
A fact-check from CNN’s Daniel Dale shredded some of the bonkers lies that Trump pushed to supportive onlookers at CPAC. As Dale put it, “In a rambling Sunday address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Trump returned again and again to election-related lies — some of them detailed and wrong, most of them vague and wrong. What can you even say about claims so disconnected from reality?” Dale shared fact-checks for eight particular claims from Trump, which largely hit similar beats.
At one point, Trump ranted: “Every time the media references the election hoax. they say the fraud is: ‘Unproven! And while there is no evidence…’ No evidence? No evidence? There’s so much evidence.” As Dale put it in response: “There was no election hoax. And while there were some scattered cases of fraud, including some by Trump supporters, there is indeed no evidence of widespread fraud or outcome-altering fraud — as Republican elections officials in various states, Trump-appointed former Attorney General William Barr, and numerous others have pointed out.” No systematic fraud was present — period.
At another point, Trump offered more specifics. Trump claimed that the Justice Department “failed to call out a late-night ballot stuffing that took place in Georgia,” “where they made up a story of a water main break in order to get people and security to leave the premises. And then they went into a rampage of stuffing, essentially, the ballots.” He’s babbling nonsense. What ex-President Trump says happened simply did not actually happen. He can’t just speak stuff into existence — he’s so clearly way out of his depth.
As Dale put it, debunking Trump’s nonsense: “There was no ballot “stuffing” at an elections facility in Georgia. While initial reports of a burst pipe or broken water main at State Farm Arena did turn out to be inaccurate — the reality was that a urinal had overflowed — Trump’s claim that local elections workers proceeded to stuff the ballot box has been debunked by the office of Georgia’s Republican elections chief, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.” Meanwhile, Trump claimed that Georgia authorities “deleted” “over 100,000 votes,” which did not happen. In fact, authorities in the state announced that they’d be removing over 100,000 “obsolete and outdated” voter registrations from the rolls. “That is not even close to the same thing as deleting actual votes,” as Dale put it. Trump’s rhetorical failures are so foundational — they’re embarrassing. Read Dale’s full fact-check at this link.
