President Donald Trump is retweeting calls to throw the Republican leaders of Georgia’s government in jail, sharing delusional election fraud claims from a fringe website called The DC Patriot, and falsely claiming he won a “landslide victory” that was stolen from him due to “tremendous problems” with voting machines.
In other words, it’s a Tuesday.
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And it happens to come the day after the Electoral College voted to confirm President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. But you wouldn’t know that by reading Trump’s Twitter feed. If his tweets are anything to go by, Trump has transcended into some parallel universe where he not only won the election but is also preparing to throw the book at all of the people he blames for “stealing” it from him.
“Election Status: Trump is in the process of proving he won, and Biden is pretending he did,” read a post from right-wing social media personality Cari Kelemen, which Trump retweeted.
Trump appears to have totally bought into the thoroughly debunked QAnon conspiracy theory that Dominion voting machines switched votes for him to Biden, sharing a tweet from right-wing radio host Kevin McCullough purporting to be a “forensic audit” of the machines.
“Dominion Voting Machines are a disaster all over the Country,” Trump tweeted in the early hours of Tuesday morning. “Changed the results of a landslide election. Can’t let this happen.”
“Many Trump votes were routed to Biden,” Trump then tweeted. The group that prepared the report, Allied Security Operations Group, claimed falsely that six precincts in Michigan had more than 100 percent voter turnout, according to the Detroit News. One township that was alleged to have seen 781 percent voter turnout really had 82 percent turnout in its highest-voting precinct, according to publicly available data. Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.
“If the Trump campaign had any actual evidence of wrongdoing – or genuine suspicion thereof – they could have requested a hand recount of every ballot in the state,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a Monday statement. “They did not, instead choosing to allow shadowy organizations claiming expertise to throw around baseless claims of fraud in an effort to mislead American voters and undermine the integrity of the election.”
Predictably, Trump also went after Benson on Tuesday. “Did Michigan Secretary of State break the law? Stay tuned!” he posted.
Trump also continues to slam fellow Republicans who haven’t gone along with his election fraud claims. On Tuesday, Trump retweeted lawyer Lin Wood, who has encouraged Georgia Republicans to boycott the runoff elections there, which will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Early voting for the races began Tuesday.
Wood’s tweet called for Trump to throw Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in jail, something he has no authority to even try to do, given he’s not a judge or even a federal prosecutor. “I bet [Trump] dislikes putting people in jail, especially ‘Republicans,’” Wood tweeted. “He gave [Kemp] and [Raffensperger] every chance to get it right. They refused. They will soon be going to jail.”
The Trump campaign has distanced itself from Wood and fellow “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell, but the president himself retweeted an early Tuesday post from Wood.
While Trump is still not even trying to come to terms with his loss, his allies have already moved on. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Biden on his victory Monday, according to the Kremlin, and on Tuesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell—the top Republican in Congress—finally, begrudgingly, acknowledged Biden’s win.
“The electoral college has spoken, so today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden,” McConnell said in a floor speech Tuesday.
