US election 2020: How Bernie Sanders predicted election night chaos involving Donald Trump

The former Democrat presidential hopeful foreshadowed Donald Trump’s chaotic attempt to claim victory | WATCH

Democratic Party Senator Bernie Sanders. Picture: Getty Images

Former Democrat presidential contender Bernie Sanders predicted how the election night drama would unfold, in an eerily prescient TV appearance two weeks ago.

Sanders made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on October 23, during which he forecast how the delay in counting pre-poll votes would set President Trump off on a bid to prematurely claim victory in the US election.

As it stands, President Trump’s chances of winning re-election are slipping away, after key states Wisconsin and Michigan were called the day after polling day.

With a record more than one hundred million votes cast ahead of the November 3 election day, primarily due to the coronavirus crisis, there was always going to be a delay in determining the result.

It hasn’t gone down well with President Trump, and it was predicted by Sanders.

“States like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, other states ... are going to be receiving huge amounts of mail-in ballots,” Sanders said.

“And unlike states like Florida or Vermont, they’re not able, for bad reasons, to begin processing those ballots until, I don’t know, Election Day or maybe when the polls close. That means you’re going to have states dealing with perhaps millions of mail-in ballots.”

Sanders predicted these early posted, late counted mail-in votes would favour Democrats after day-of voting would come in stronger for the Republican Party.

“Here is the fear — and I hope everybody hears it. It could well be that at 10 o’clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan, he’s winning in Pennsylvania, he’s winning in Wisconsin, and he gets on the television and he says, ‘Thank you, Americans, for re-electing me. It’s all over. Have a good day.’

“But then, the next day, and the day following, all of those mail-in ballots start getting counted, and it turns out that Biden was won those states, at which point Trump says, ‘See? I told you the whole thing was fraudulent. I told you those mail-in ballots were crooked. And we’re not going to leave office.’ That is a worry that I and a lot of people have … people should be aware of that possibility.”

Trump’s election-night victory call

After a night of knife-edge vote counting, President Trump held a press conference in the White House just after 2am local time, at which he claimed victory.

He claimed the poll had been subject to “fraud”.

“Frankly, we did win this election,” President Trump said. “So our goal now is to ensure the integrity, for the good of this nation — this is a very big moment, this is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner, so we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. It’s a very sad moment.”

President Trump has continued to question the legitimacy of the vote count in subsequent Twitter posts, some of which have been blocked by the social media platform.

They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020

Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020

We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact,.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020