Trump casts doubt on election results after saying he was ‘absolutely willing’ to accept them

Days after saying he was “absolutely willing” to accept the massive Republican losses in the midterm elections, President Donald Trump suggested Monday on social media the Democratic victories weren’t “honest.” “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,” he wrote on Truth Social, implying there was something nefarious about elections carried out under different processes in different states. “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” the post concluded, without elaborating. Election officials nationwide have reported that voting this year was largely routine. Asked about the post, a White House official noted that Trump had told reporters ahead of last week’s elections that he would respect the results “if they’re honest elections.” In the lead up to the election, the Justice Department sent a number of legal letters raising the specter of noncitizen voting and fraud in a number of Democratic-led states that a judge found was an attempt to intimidate election officials. And Trump has a history of denying election results. His previous false claims include that the 2016 Iowa Caucus was rigged against him when he lost to Sen. Ted Cruz, that he won the national popular vote in 2016 despite losing it by almost 3 million vote,s and that he won the 2020 election despite losing it by 7 million votes. Yet by the time election night arrived last week and the scale of Democrats’ victory became clear, Trump suggested he would accept the midterm results — while noting that he was not on the ballot. “I’m absolutely willing to accept those results,” Trump told the New York Times in an interview Tuesday night. “I’m going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!” he wrote in a Truth Social post that night. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote in another. In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, Trump ran through a number of reasons why Republicans lost, including that his deportation policies “might be too tough” and that voters “didn’t like the war. They didn’t like that gasoline was up.” “In some cases they didn’t like the candidates, and that’s their prerogative,” Trump said in the interview, which was taped Friday. “I was not on the ballot, but I campaigned hard for some people, and I think if I was on the ballot, it would have been a much different situation, because you saw the level of popularity and love.” FOR SUBSCRIBERSBig tasks await as Congress returns after Democratic surge FOR SUBSCRIBERSDemocrats won big on Election Day. But can they agree on AI? His stance seemed to start to shift on Saturday, after he replaced longtime chief of staff Susie Wiles with MAGA favorite Stephen Miller. That was the day Trump reposted a user on Truth Social who questioned how so many states could have had their votes swing by 15% in the midterm elections. “A pattern this even demands answers at the ballot level: paper ballot hand counts, poll-book check-ins against votes counted, and voter files showing who actually turned out,” the post said. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, told NBC News that Trump’s claims about the election are “completely false.” FOR SUBSCRIBERSBig tasks await as Congress returns after Democratic surge FOR SUBSCRIBERSDemocrats won big on Election Day. But can they agree on AI? “The systems worked,” and “the election was a massive rebuke of his leadership,” Aguilar said in a phone interview. “He’s upset because he lost and people are holding him accountable,” he added. Claims about a rigged election were sparse as polls opened and results came in. Most focused on casting a conspiratorial shadow on real mishaps caused by bad weather in Arizona and malfunctioning machines in Westchester County, New York. In the latter case, election officials followed established contingency plans to use backup machines and said all votes cast would be counted. The incidents got little pick-up from influential accounts and Trump paid them little mind on his own social media channels. Researchers at the University of Washington who were tracking false narratives on election night told reporters their early analysis shows the spread of such rumors was much smaller at the onset of the night than during elections past. Immediately following election night, those rumors died down. “What’s missing for election denialism this cycle? Widespread shared grievance,” wrote Kate Starbird, a professor at the university, in a series of social media posts analyzing the rigged election rumors, noting that the false narrative seems to have drifted back to the fringes even as the president puts renewed effort into boosting them. One person who quickly raised questions online about the integrity of the election after Democrats made larger than anticipated gains in the House, Senate and various state legislatures, was MyPillow founded Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who’s made numerous debunked claims about the 2020 election. Lindell was hit with a $2 million defamation judgment related to those claims last year. While Lindell had previously made unfounded allegations about foreign interference, the allegations this time around are focused on “matching algorithmic patterns.” Trump now appears to be focused on the numbers as well, but it’s unclear which polls he was referring to when he wrote, “How could the Polls be so wrong???” The polls this election cycle underestimated the size of Democrats’ winning margin, although they “captured the direction of this year’s election,” the Pew Research Center said in a preliminary analysis posted Friday. Trump had previously said the “actual” polls showed Republicans winning, and dismissed polling that showed Democrats would take control of the House and might take control of the Senate as “fake.” Democrats would up over-performing in even those polls. “The Radical Left Democrats are going CRAZY with Fake Polls,” he wrote on Truth Social back in August. “They’re putting them out at levels never seen before. They’re called, ‘Demoralization Operations,’ where they try to demoralize Republicans so that they don’t go out and vote — But the actual Polls are tremendous, and the Spirit in our Country has never been higher. We’re winning against EVERYONE.” Aguilar said “Election officials cannot and do not pay attention to” opinion polls. “We follow the law,” he said.