Trump Ramps Up a Menacing Election Lie in Key Swing State
Donald Trump is already trying to claim there was mass voter fraud in the election—just in case he loses.
Donald Trump is already constructing his election fraud theory if he loses the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
On Wednesday morning, Trump made a baseless accusation that there is widespread voter fraud going on in the state. “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” wrote the Republican nominee on Truth Social. “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”
Trump’s alarmist rhetoric about election integrity in the swing state appears to only be escalating. On Tuesday, speaking in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Trump said he intended to sue Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia, for allegedly turning away voters who waited in long lines to receive mail-in ballots.
“There’s been lines like this for days across counties in PA,” wrote James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director, on X .” Only for elections officials to come out and push people out of line and tell them to come back. Voter suppression!”
But the reality is different from the Trump team’s hallucination. “Contrary to what is being depicted on social media, if you are in line by 5 p.m. for an on-demand mail-in ballot application, you will have the opportunity to submit your application for a mail-in ballot,” wrote Bucks County on the Bucks County Government Facebook page.
Earlier this month, a viral video appeared to show election workers in Bucks County ripping up mail-in ballots that had been marked for Trump. However, on Friday, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, issued a joint statement explaining that the video was part of a Russian election disinformation plot.
This follows Trump’s similar claims earlier in the week, in which he singled out York and Lancaster counties. In a post late Monday night, Trump spread lies about thousands of fraudulent ballots and voter registrations, even making the widely inaccurate claim that one person had filled out 2,600 forms, which he again reiterated at the Allentown rally.
The reality is that those counties are going through their normal proceedings of verifying last-minute voter registrations and mail-in ballot applications. Any concerns were in fact already raised to law enforcement, according to county officials.
But in a state whose Republicans are nearly all election deniers, Trump’s flagrant lies don’t bode well for a close race come Election Day.