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Trump suddenly stopped claiming he cheated as soon as he won

Pabio November 9, 2024

During the 2024 campaign, the president-elect Donald Trump claimed without evidence that Democratic “cheating” and voter fraud was occurring. When he was declared the winner early Wednesday morning, those claims abruptly ended.

On Tuesday afternoon, as votes were underway, Trump claimed on social media that there was “massive cheating” in Philadelphia.

“There’s a lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law enforcement is coming!!!” he said on social networks. In a separate post he said there was a similar response from law enforcement in Detroit.

Law enforcement in both cities worked to reassure voters that there was no evidence of cheating or fraud.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said Tuesday that there was “no factual basis” to Trump’s assertion.

Trump has not mentioned election fraud since the race was called.

The change in tone after Trump’s victory should drive home the message that Trump’s fraud allegations weren’t real, said David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, which works with Republican and Democratic election officials to build confidence in elections.

“It was never about whether our system was actually secure. It was never about whether or not elections could be trusted or about policies that could make an election more secure or not, it was just about the outcome,” he said.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden echoes this sentiment when he said Americans should put aside questions about election integrity after Trump decisively won the 2024 race.

“I hope we can resolve the issue of the integrity of the American electoral system. It’s honest, it’s fair and it’s transparent. And he can be trusted, win or lose,” Biden said in remarks from the Rose Garden.

Claire Zunk, communications director for the RNC’s Election Integrity, did not answer questions about why Trump stopped talking about fraud and whether he still believes it happened, but instead provided a statement praising the work of the RNC.

“President Trump called attention to real problems in our election system on and before Election Day, and we continue to be vigilant and responsive on the ground,” Zunk said in a statement. “That’s exactly why the RNC and the Trump campaign developed an unprecedented election integrity agenda – so we could address issues before the election and be ready to act as votes were cast and counted. We responded in real time, ended threats to our election, and protected legal votes.

Smears about Pennsylvania and Michigan, until Trump wins them

At a rally in Pennsylvania the day before the election, Trump spent 20 minutes warning the crowd that there would be fraud in the state.

“They’re fighting so hard to steal the damn thing,” he said. “Look at what’s happening in your state, every day they’re talking about extending business hours; who heard of this thing?

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told reporters on Election Day that “if there is no fraud in Philadelphia and Detroit, there will be no election, they will even if they are not obliged to do so, to remain in practice.”

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not contest the results in Philadelphia, where Trump received 20% of the vote, or in Detroit, where he received about 8% of the vote. The results are only final when certified by the State.

Trump’s history of baseless fraud claims

This is not the first time Trump has made this claim. During the 2016 primaries, Trump accused fellow Republican Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) of “fraud” when Cruz won the Iowa caucuses. In Colorado, he called the primary “rigged.” During the general election, when he won the Electoral College but failed to win the popular vote, he began making allegations of fraud more consistently, although failing to provide evidence to support them.

“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he said. on social networks − without providing any proof.

Trump’s repeatedly refuted claims that the 2020 elections were stolen from him was an important part of his 2024 campaign, often presented in his rally speeches. This year, his campaign and the Republican National Committee filed a total of 175 lawsuits before the election, including claims that noncitizens were included on voter rolls, in what many saw as an effort to lay the groundwork for a challenge to the results of the election.

The hope that Trump’s victory will calm his supporters

Polls have shown that many Trump supporters were much more likely that supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris believe that the election will be marked by fraud.

Becker said he hoped Trump’s victory would mark the start of “some restoration of sanity” about the security of U.S. elections.

“The idea that people might believe the lie, which is ridiculous on its face, that Joe Biden, as a candidate, somehow rigged an election when Trump was president of the United States- United States and controlled the executive branch, but as president of the United States he was unable to do so, that should reveal the truth about our electoral system,” Becker said.

Nonetheless, some on the far right argue that Trump’s victory in 2024 proves that the 2020 election was stolen. They did so by comparing the 80 million votes Biden received in 2020 to the number of votes counted for Vice President Kamala Harris as of Wednesday morning, which was closer to 60 million. They claim the 20 million vote gap is proof that Democrats cheated in 2020.

But they compare the final numbers from the 2020 elections to the partial results from 2024.

Millions of votes cast by mail are still being counted. Even if the remaining votes are not enough to change the outcome of the election, the total number of votes received by Harris and Trump is not yet official and is expected to increase by several million. For example, as of Friday morning, Harris had received more than 69 million votes, up from 60 million on Wednesday morning when the far-right accusations began. Some heavily Democratic states where mail-in voting is very common, like California, are still counting ballots.

Conservative media personality Benny Johnson called the difference between the 2020 and 2024 Democratic vote counts “very sus”, short for suspect, and failed Ohio Republican congressional candidate JR Majewski declared the results proved that “2020 was stolen.”

“Kamala got 60 million votes in 2024”, Dinesh D’Souza written theformerly Twitter, Wednesday. “Does anyone really believe Biden got 80 million in 2020? Where have these 20 million Democratic voters gone? The truth is that they never existed. »

Despite his victory in 2016, Trump appointed a commission to investigate election fraud. dissolved it abruptly in 2018 after finding no substantial evidence that US elections are corrupt.

On Friday, Trump suggested he might not be done with the issue of election fraud. In a post on Truth Social Attacking California Governor Gavin Newsom, Trump said: “As the ‘AGENT’ of the United States of America in matters of voting and elections, I WILL REQUIRE VOTER ID AND PROOF CITIZENSHIP ARE A NECESSARY PART AND COMPONENT OF THE VOTING PROCESS! “