On the early morning of Nov. 4, just hours after the polls closed across the country, President Donald Trump took the stage at the White House, claiming he “already won” the election.
However, with millions of ballots yet to be counted, this was not actually the case.
This premature claim confirmed the fears of many Democrats that the Trump campaign would announce a premature victory in an attempt to cast doubt on the election results.
Trump has been accused of spreading fake news well before the start of his term as president. From statements regarding the crowd size at his inauguration to the conspiracy group QAnon, his administration is no stranger to disinformation.
Fake news has become a very important issue, and many are concerned about what impact this could have in future elections. A Pew Research Center study found that after the 2016 presidential election, 64% of adults in the U.S. said fake news stories caused “a great deal” of confusion.
Early Saturday, President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner, but Trump has continued to make false claims about the legitimacy of the election.
In a statement published on the Trump campaign’s website, he said “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed.”
The Associated Press reported that Trump was golfing in Virginia at the time the statement was released.
There is no available evidence to show that the election was incorrectly called, and multiple news sources, including the Associated Press, the New York Times and many others, have declared Biden the winner.
Trump’s claims of election illegitimacy are largely based on mail-in voting, which has been expanded due to COVID-19.
“I’ve been talking about mail-in voting for a long time,” he said in a speech early Wednesday. “It’s really destroyed our system. It’s a corrupt system and it makes people corrupt.”
Since this past spring, Trump has posted more than 70 tweets against mail-in voting, mostly claiming it leads to increased fraud. However, there is no evidence that there is any danger at all associated with it. According to a study by the Brennan Center, voter fraud incident rates in the U.S. average around 0.0003% and 0.0025%.
Trump continued to question the results of the election throughout Saturday, at one point tweeting “I WON THE ELECTION, BY A LOT!”
He has promised to challenge the results in court, however, it is not currently clear on what legal grounds he will do so.
Continuing his message from the campaign trail, Biden called for unity and peace in the wake of the election. In a brief statement made in Delaware after Pennsylvania was officially called, he stressed the importance of healing.
“With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” Biden said in his speech. “It’s time for America to unite and to heal. We are the United States of America and there’s nothing we can’t do, if we do it together.”
