‘All about the machines’: Trump claims Democrats’ midterm wins not ‘honest’
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Almost a week after Democrats swept the midterms with historic gains in Congress and downballot races, President Donald Trump denied the legitimacy of election results across the country and resurrected old conspiracy theories about voting machines.
“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest,” Trump posted on social media Monday morning. “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. It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!”
Democrats saw historic, sweeping gains across the country last week. They won the largest majority in decades in the U.S. House of Representatives, flipped party control of the U.S. Senate and clinched control of local governments in numerous states.
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In his social media post, Trump singled out what he termed “early voting ‘dumps’” for particular skepticism. He was referring to the fact that, in some key Senate races originally predicted to be nail-biters, Democratic candidates got enough votes to win before polls even opened on Election Day due to huge turnout for early voting. That wasn’t dishonest and merely reflected the size of Democrats’ blowout victory.
Trump also directed his ire at electronic voting machines, one of his favorite subjects.
The president has pushed false claims about rigged voting machines since he lost the 2020 election. And many prominent election deniers in the MAGA movement promoted conspiracy theories before the midterms that Democrats would rig election equipment to steal the election — and pressured the president to take preemptive action to take control of voting.
But Trump didn’t do anything, beyond directing the U.S. Department of Justice to interfere with the vote in a few key states.
Trump’s mini-rant comes two days after he reposted several conspiracy theories that used cherry-picked data to suggest the results must have been manipulated.