What has Trump tweeted since Biden won US presidential election 2020?
President Donald Trump continues to deny that Joe Biden will replace him in the Oval Office and has been using his favourite communication tool to share his views.
In the days immediately following the US presidential election, Donald Trump was mainly seen on the golf course while his Republican machine - at least some factions of it - went into overdrive on the pre-election prediction that a Joe Biden victory could only happen with voter fraud. Of course, it was an obvious tactic, pointing to mail-in ballots as the problem, knowing full well that his opponent's supporters were being encouraged to use this service given concerns during a global pandemic, while Republicans downplayed the virus that has devastated the nation.
The now lame duck president watched as his electoral college votes gradually trickling away from him and news agencies began, as is customary, to call out the battleground states in favour of the Democrats. That process finally led all the networks, including Trump-supporting Fox News, to call Biden the President-elect, despite Trump tweeting “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” an hour or so before.
Giuliani: "All the networks!"
It just so happened that the election call occurred as Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was holding a rather unusual press conference. An administrative error meant that the planned 11:30 ET press conference in Philadelphia was held outside a garage door, instead of at a well-known five-star hotel chain, prompting one comedian to tweet:
"I could write jokes for 800 years and I'd never think of something funnier than Trump booking the Four Seasons for his big presser, and it turning out to be the Four Seasons Total Landscaping parking lot between a dildo store and a crematorium."
As news of the decision by the networks was relayed to Giuliani during that live press conference, the lawyer reacted almost hysterically, as if the same process of informing voters of the projected election results hadn't been happening for decades.
Meanwhile, Trump's Twitter account had gone surprisingly quiet since his previous capitalised outburst. Maybe the inevitable bad news was sinking in, or possibly it just took a few hours for the fire and brimstone to reach his fingers, as he shouted:
“THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM!”
FACT CHECK:
There’s absolutely no evidence that discrepancies on mail ballots or any type of election fraud has either taken place, even less so on a large enough scale to affect the election result.
Then one minute later:
"71,000,000 Legal Votes. The most EVER for a sitting President!"
FACT CHECK:
Trump has lost the popular vote by over 4 million votes so far.
Silence from Trump on Twitter Saturday night
Then there was silence again until Sunday morning. When Trump reappeared online, he predictably resumed his assault on election processes in Philadelphia.
Trump didn’t address the fact that he lost the electoral college by a landslide, just yesterday. He focused his efforts on Pennsylvania where Joe Biden beat him by over 40,000 votes at the last count.
FACT CHECK:
Trump's claim that any discrepancies in mail in ballots in the state would affect the entire election are completely untrue.
Joe Biden has won 290 electoral college votes so far.
A week on and we have seen a constant tirade from the lame duck president on Twitter as he continues to make baseless claims that undermine the US democracy, create more divides, incite activists and risk national security by denying a smooth transition of power. The social media company has marked most of them with a warning.
Here are a selection of them.
Election fraud: Trump's go-to tactic
We should remember too that this is a go-to tactic for Trump. When he was fighting for the GOP nomination in 2016 he called voter fraud. He said the election was rigged ahead of the general election four years ago. And even after he had won, he claimed that millions of illegal votes had cost him the popular vote. Surely at some point his loyal supporters will call 'BS'.
See this article for further fact-checking on the widespread election fraud claim. [Spoiler alert: it's debunked] Then again, you can lead a red, white and blue elephant to water but...