During the Saturday Night Live cold open over the weekend, cast member Austin Johnson said, while playing President Donald Trump: “The other day we lost, and I didn’t even say it was rigged, I accepted the results. Which is almost scarier, in a way – it’s like, what the hell is he planning?”
Well, on Monday Trump did finally question the “Blue Wave” election results that flipped both the House and Senate in a Truth Social post.
“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote,” said the president. “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!”
Trump often makes claims about election and voter fraud, particularly when he or other GOP candidates lose elections. Earlier this year he even proposed that Republicans “take over” elections in more than a dozen states that he called “crooked.”
Experts generally regard claims of widespread voter fraud to be a myth, per the Brennan Center for Justice. According to the American Bar Association, claims of widespread election fraud are “unsupported by evidence and are being used to erode public confidence in elections.”
Regarding Trump’s specific claims in his Monday Truth Social posts, polls regularly showed Democrats in the lead ahead of the midterm elections. While their wins might have been bigger than expected, the Democratic victories follows historical precedent – the president’s party often loses seats in the midterms.
Polls also showed that Americans were frustrated by the economy as they headed to the voting booth. Trump’s decision to join Israel to attack Iran has been unpopular, and it has come with high gas prices for Americans and falling approval ratings for the president.
As for the “dumps” Trump referenced, data from the University of Florida Election Lab shows that Democrats do participate in early voting at a higher percentage than Republicans at 43% of early voters compared to 30% of Republicans. Election Day isn’t a federal holiday and voting lines can be long, so early voting allows people to vote without impacting their work schedule. Early votes are real votes and do not indicate election fraud.
Finally, Trump referenced voting machines. Leading up to the midterms, there were actually claims circulating that voting machines were cheating Democrats and changing their votes to Republican candidates, according to FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
“There is no evidence that touchscreen voting machines are deliberately switching voter selections,” FactCheck.org explained. “Rather, elections experts and state election officials have said that reported issues of machines initially not recording votes correctly are a result of familiar machine calibration issues or voter error. Also, nearly the entire country votes in a manner where voters review a paper ballot before having their votes officially cast.”
David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said that claims about voting machines have cropped up every election cycle for nearly 20 years. Voters who use machines to cast their ballots can review their votes before submission and ask poll workers to help if their machine appears to be calibrated incorrectly.
CNBC noted that Trump’s social media post appeared to be a “sharp pivot from what has been a conciliatory tone” following the election, as that SNL cold open referenced. In the immediate aftermath of the midterms, Trump even seemed to come down a bit harder on Republicans than Democrats. He also made a significant change in his administration, announcing that Susie Wiles retired from her chief of staff position and that she would be replaced with controversial figure Stephen Miller.
However, Trump was calling on the Department of Justice to investigate Democrats by Saturday. He made the announcement in a Truth Social post after party leaders said they planned to investigate Trump’s alleged self-enrichment at the public’s expense and that they wouldn’t rule out impeaching the president.
