First, months ago, he falsely started portraying the ballots as full of fraud. Second, he falsely claimed that Democratic governors who did not like him were in control of the count. Third, he falsely argued that there was something ominous and even perhaps illegal about the normal practice of counting votes after election day.
All this nonsense, the dozens of mood-lies we had to debunk over and over and over, were apparently in the service of this present moment – a close election in which he could try to turn the seeds of doubt systematically planted in fans’ minds in utter rejection of his possible defeat.
Trump implemented the plan early Wednesday morning and delivered a very inaccurate address in the White House in which he unjustifiably claimed that he had already won and unjustifiably claimed that a fraud was being committed against him. Then he pulled back to Twitter – whereupon almost everything was wrong for the rest of the day.
Trump
tweeted: “They are working hard to eliminate 500,000 voting benefits in Pennsylvania – ASAP. So do Michigan and others!”
Untrue. Provinces simply counted the votes. Entry votes, which favored Democrats in general, were counted after election day in some states, such as Pennsylvania, because Republican lawmakers there would not be able to allow the counting process to begin if the votes show up.
Trump
tweeted that ‘surprise letters’ had ‘magically disappeared’ his initial clues in an important condition.
Untrue. There was no “surprise” – votes were once again simply counted – and ballots are actually not dumped anywhere. When political observers tweet about ‘polls’, they are not talking about polls being thrown away. Rather, it refers to moments in which a large number of newly counted votes in the public totals are incurred, or ‘dumped’.
Trump
tweeted“We are BIG up, but they are trying to STOLE the election. We will never allow them to do that. Voting cannot be put out after the polls are closed!”
Again: completely false. No one tried to steal anything; there was no evidence of election fraud. And votes are simply counted after the ballot boxes are closed, and not cast after the ballot boxes are closed.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Trump tried a very weak fraud: he declared that “we claimed, for election purposes,” Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. (States are not Trump’s “claim” via Twitter. The votes decide who wins.) Trump then added: “In addition, we hereby claim the state of Michigan if in fact there were a large number of votes in secret, widely reported is! ”
CNN and other media have already projected that Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, would win Michigan. (Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina at that time remained too close to call.) And there was no evidence of ‘a large number of votes secretly dumped’, there or elsewhere; he may have been referring to a typo by a Michigan province, which was quickly corrected, which soon became apparent that Biden was giving extra votes.
It was not just Trump who made fraudulent allegations on Wednesday. As so often over the past four years, he is helped by an entire ecosystem of pro-Trump misinformation.
The son of the president
Eric Trump, White House Press Secretary
Kayleigh McEnany and campaign manager
Bill Stepien, among other allies, made unfounded afternoon statements that Trump has already won Pennsylvania.
Matt Schlapp, president of the American Conservative Union and husband of Trump campaign senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp,
promote an unfounded conspiracy theory involving Arizona, Trump voters and Sharpie markers.
And Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani took part in a campaign event in Philadelphia during which he
barrage of conspiracy
false statements. Giuliani’s remarks were so absurd that we save them for a separate fact check.
Dishonesty has been a hallmark of the Trump presidency from the beginning, and it has been a central part of his re-election campaign. It was perhaps fitting that he and his deputies, with his possible path to 270 smaller votes getting smaller and smaller, moved on to the approach he knows best.
