Trump’s Pennsylvania Lies Are Too Desperate Even for Twitter

No, late-arriving ballots weren’t illegal, and no, they’re not changing the results.

Evan Vucci / Associated Press

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Things are looking very bad for President Trump in Pennsylvania. Decision Desk, which is used by some outlets to track and call elections, has already declared Joe Biden the winner in the state—which Trump absolutely must win to have any shot at reelection. Other outlets haven’t quite seen enough, but the absentee ballot count has gone overwhelmingly for Biden (not surprising, given that the president discouraged his supporters from voting by mail), and since Biden passed Trump in the statewide totals early Thursday, his lead has steadily grown. It now stands at nearly 30,000 votes.

How is Trump taking this? Not well. On Saturday morning, he fired off a series of tweets pushing false theories about what’s happening in Pennsylvania, in an attempt to egg on his supporters’ protests and rally Republicans to his side:

Let’s unpack this quickly.

First: Ballots received after Election Day aren’t illegal, because a state court ruled a week before the election that the state’s deadline (which was Election Day) must be extended to November 6 (which was yesterday). Voters cast those ballots legally under the law as it was applied at the time. Had that not been the law at the time, many of those voters likely would have returned their ballots in person instead. There’s nothing shady about these ballots. Trump’s hope here is simply that the US Supreme Court will overturn the decision after the election and throw out those ballots.

Second: These ballots haven’t actually been added to the count! They have been set aside by counties in anticipation of court challenges. Trump’s current deficit—which may be insurmountable—doesn’t even include these late-arriving ballots. That deficit is a result of absentee ballots received by Election Day finally being counted. The reason they are being counted now is that the Republican legislature blocked efforts that would have allowed counties to count these ballots before Election Day, in order to set up this exact dynamic.

And lastly, it’s just not true that Trump’s campaign hasn’t been allowed to observe the vote count. As CBS News reported in an excellent debunking of this claim (it’s not the first time Trump has made it), his campaign’s big fight in Pennsylvania was simply over how close observers in the room could stand to the election workers. They got it shortened to six feet. You can also watch them work on a live stream.

As is becoming a habit, Trump’s tweets were up for only a few minutes before Twitter slapped a label on them warning that the information they contain “is disputed and might be misleading.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate