Timeline: Trump Falsely Declares Victory and Intends to Challenge Legitimate Counts
President Trump addresses a crowd of his supporters live at the White House in the early morning hours of November 4. Source.
At 2:00am on Wednesday, November 4, incumbent President of the United States Donald Trump prematurely declared himself the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. He addressed the nation via broadcasted press conference, with a crowd of staunch supporters in the room, from a lectern in the White House alongside Vice President Mike Pence. While the speech started as any candidate’s address might on an election night — reviewing the key states and commenting on tight races — the President quickly went off the rails. He declared his intention to cause “all voting to stop” by appealing to “the US Supreme Court” for help. Although his intended timeline was unclear from the address, one frightening thought precipitated: President Trump intends to forestall American democracy if that’s what it takes for him to win.
There are two reasons this result is troubling. The first is that the vote counting is simply not done yet. The three key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin still remain in the air with hundreds of thousands of outstanding legitimate votes which must be counted. If by causing “all voting to stop” he means halting counts, the President is suggesting a course of action that will disenfranchise millions of Americans by his decree. There is still a chance that President Trump will win the election straight out in the battle of electoral votes. In fact, he is favoured to win some outstanding states as of 4:30am on election night, including Georgia. What is troubling is that he has opted not to wait for any of these races to play out, or for late counts to trickle in, but rather to declare that he intends to wage a legal battle against any proceedings which could erode his extant leads.
Other national figures have taken notice of Trump’s bold declaration of victory and challenged his legitimacy. Tom Wolf, Governor of Pennsylvania, has promised that every ballot in the state will be counted. Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative radio host, has called the proclamation “deeply irresponsible.” CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta went so far as to say “the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves” as a sitting American president began a perverse campaign intent on “delegitimizing” a fair and honest democratic election.
In reality, what happened in the dead of night in the East Room of the White House was the culmination of an unconstitutional contingency plan that Donald Trump has been alluding to for months. Knowing that majority in-person election day votes would likely be counted before the disproportionately Democrat mail-in votes, Trump has warned his followers that legitimate absentee ballots would be subject to “manipulation” and “fraud like you’ve never seen.” This is simply not true, and a nightmare scenario for election officials looking to ensure that every vote is counted.
Since the early hours of the morning, Trump has continued his tirade against vote counting on Twitter. Among other things, he has declared that updated counts of mail-in ballots which favor Biden are fraudulent, called into question “surprise ballot dumps” insinuating that they are fabricated, and redoubled on his verbal commitment to go to court. It seems likely that these tweets will not be the end of the line for his campaign’s efforts. Millions of Americans will watch today with nervous suspense.
Looking forward, Trump’s reckless strategy is certain to prolong this endless election cycle. A political battle will quickly turn into a legal one — as an avalanche of lawsuits and countersuits concerning the legitimacy of mail-in ballots likely stands in between either candidate and an official victory. It didn’t have to be this way, but with Trump throwing all democratic norms to the wind, only the final counting of votes and perhaps the courts can tell us who the President of the United States will be come January 2021.