US President Donald Trump claims to have won the 2020 election, discounting the fact votes in pivotal states are still being counted and claiming he will challenge the remaining ballots in the US Supreme Court.
Facing reporters and yipping supplicants at the White House around 2am local time, Trump said, “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
That’s not true. Not yet, at least. Both Trump and his challenger, the Democratic Party’s Joe Biden, need 270 electoral college votes to win the thing. At time of writing, Trump has 213. Biden has 225.
While Trump has secured some big-time states like Florida and Texas, he falsely claimed to have won in Georgia.
With 91% of the ballots counted, Trump maintains a narrow lead in the state. However, mail-in ballots are expected to be counted over the coming hours, potentially handing Biden a lead in the southern state.
Trump also said he’s up in Pennsylvania, a state which is known for being slow to count the bloody things, and a region expected to field a whole heap of mail-in ballots.
“Most importantly, we’re winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes,” Trump said. Again, that’s currently true, but those postal votes still have the capacity to change the entire situation.
Adding to his most recent (and most-recently censored) tweet, Trump said he would move to challenge the legitimacy of those remaining votes in the Supreme Court.
“We want all voting to stop,” he said, calling the situation a “fraud” and an “embarrassment to our country.”
But wait, there’s more. Referencing Arizona – a state which the Associated Press just called for Biden – the big guy said he wanted “that obviously to stay in play.”
He wants the count to continue where he’s behind, in the chance mail-in ballots may break in his favour, while barring the Democrats from doing the same.
Wild.
“This is a fraud on the American public… we were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election”
Trump claims election victory, but with millions of uncounted votes it is too early to credibly make that claim#Election2020 https://t.co/fVQ13KG8wT pic.twitter.com/144C0V4VTz
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 4, 2020
It’s not the first time he’s wheeled out that argument, given the fact that mail-in votes appear to be favoured by Biden supporters in many corners of the country.
Is there evidence for his claim of mass voter fraud perpetrated by mail-in ballots? No. Does he believe that shit? Honestly, I am not even sure any more. I don’t really think the guy even wants to be president, and he could just be thrashing in that direction out of some ill-understood and terminal nervous impulse. The guy clearly hates this shit. Is this worrying? Yeah, look, it is a bit.
Anyway.
Notably, Trump also wore a blue tie. I’ll leave it up to you to decipher if that’s some kind of coded message, or a subliminal cry for help.
