WASHINGTON — President Trump continued tweeting about the election on Saturday evening after it was called for Joe Biden, declaring that he “won” while boosting unsupported claims of fraud.
The president was playing a round of golf on Saturday morning when Biden won Pennsylvania and was declared president-elect, but Trump has refused to concede or accept the result, calling the 2020 race “far from over.”
His Twitter feed was a sea of fact-check labels as the tech giant censored the president’s largely baseless claims about fraud, which Twitter said was “disputed.”
“THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES,” Trump tweeted, without sharing evidence of his claims.
“BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM!” he continued.
In a subsequent missive, he noted that the 71 million votes he received were “the most EVER for a sitting President!”
Trump is correct about his record-breaking support but it was not as high as that for Biden, who received 74.5 million votes.
The president’s re-election campaign has refused to accept the results of the presidential race, claiming widespread fraud in lawsuits challenging the final vote count, suits which judges in several states have tossed out.
Republicans in Congress maintained radio silence on Saturday as Trump’s supporters like attorney Rudy Giuliani frantically claimed that the call was invalid.
Messages of congratulations have poured in from leaders around the world as Republicans contested the results in several swing states that Biden won by razor-thin margins.