Donald Trump’s press briefing alleging widespread and systematic election fraud was riddled with unproven allegations.
CLAIM: This is a case where they’re trying to steal an election, they’re trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen.
FACT: Trump has not provided any credible evidence to show that his opponents are trying to “rig” or “steal” an election.
CLAIM: If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us, if you count the votes that came in late.
FACT: Mail-in votes do not “come in late” illegally. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, allow mail-in votes to be counted days after the election, as long as they are postmarked on or before election day.
CLAIM: We were up by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot and that gets whittled down to, I think they said now we’re up by 90,000 votes, and they keep coming and coming and coming, they find them all over.
FACT: Mail-in votes are not illegal. They are a standard means of voting. Counting them after polling day is standard practice in the US and Australia. There are more mail-ins than usual because of COVID-19, which made people, especially Democrats, wary of in-person voting.
CLAIM: Our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.
FACT: There is no evidence to back his claim workers are deliberately changing votes in secret. Observers monitor the vote-counting process.
CLAIM: We think there’s going to be a lot of litigation, because we have so much evidence, so much proof, and it’s going to end up perhaps in the highest court in the land.
FACT: Trump has offered no proof of this, only allegations.
CLAIM: We will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election; we can’t allow anyone to silence our voters.
FACT: Trump has offered no evidence of corruption.
CLAIM: Democrat officials never believed they would win this election honestly, that’s why they did mail-in ballots.
FACT: There are more mail-in votes this year because of safety fears surrounding the pandemic. More Democrats are inclined to vote by mail than Republicans. That is why mail-in votes — often the last to be counted — favour Democrats, leading to the late pro-Biden swings that we have seen across the undecided states.
CLAIM: Mail-in voting has really destroyed our system, it is a corrupt system … they wait to find out how many votes they need and they find them.
FACT: Trump has offered no evidence to back this serious claim of deliberate and systematic corruption in the counting process.
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