It’s Wednesday, Nov. 4th, the day after the presidential election of 2020 and, as almost everyone predicted, America’s electoral system is a complete sh*tshow. Currently, Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden is leading by a slim margin of 225 electoral votes to President Trump’s 213 but with key battleground states too early to call and millions of mail-in ballots yet to be counted, it’s still anyone’s game. And that’s not sitting well with Trump, who has, predictably, taken to Twitter to rant about coverage on Fox News and spew conspiracy theories about “ballot dumping” in states like Pennsylvania, which leaned red early in the night but has started to turn blue.
Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
Trump’s claim that, somehow, states like Pennsylvania were handing in “surprise” ballots is so dangerously false and misleading that Twitter of all platforms started censoring his tweets, but that wasn’t enough for Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman, who’s clearly fed up with the administration’s misinformation tactics.
Fetterman held an interview with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson early Wednesday to defend his state and assure the people of Pennsylvania that every vote will be counted. He also managed to get a brutal dig in at Trump, calling him a “random Internet troll” who’s making claims that have “no basis in reality.” And he’s not entirely wrong. Trump’s accusation that Pennsylvania is a Dem-controlled state that’s out to get him is false on a few levels. The swing state is actually controlled by a Republican legislature that reached a stalemate with Democratic Governor Tom Wolf over allowing counties to canvass mail-in ballots ahead of election day. If the measure had passed, early voting — which has largely skewed in Biden’s favor in the state — could’ve been tallied before in-person voting, meaning we’d likely already know the outcome in Pennsylvania.
That might be why Lt. Governor Fetterman had such strong words for Trump and his Republican backers, who are already threatening legal action when it comes to counting mail-in ballots.
(Sidenote: You know things are bad when the voting process for American Idol runs smoother than the 2020 presidential election. Someone call Ryan Seacrest to get this straightened out.)