AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s flailing effort resting on mendacity

8 min readNov 21, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s flailing attempt to cling to office after voters decisively chose to oust him has taken the country into a dark and fictional place.

According to falsehoods being told on his behalf and embraced by him, the U.S. election was manipulated by scheming from a dead Venezuelan strongman, by a computer system capable of flipping Trump votes to Joe Biden ones across the country, and by something weird happening in Germany. If that’s not enough, the communists are coming.

None of this happened. None of it is true.

But Trump and his legal team are making poisonous allegations in hopes that state Republican legislators will shatter the foundational procedures and traditions of U.S. democracy and nullify the voters’ will.

While this plays out, President-elect Biden continues to be denied the briefings and facilities given during presidential transitions. An increasing number of Republican lawmakers say he should be getting that cooperation but they haven’t done anything to make that happen.

From the past week:

THE TWEETS

TRUMP: “I WON THE ELECTION! … I won the Election! … I WON THE ELECTION!” — tweets Sunday, Monday and Wednesday.

THE FACTS: No, Biden won the election.

Biden achieved victory in key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona, topping the threshold of 270 electoral votes to clinch the presidency with room to spare.

Biden also won Georgia after a recount by hand this past week. That gives him 306 electoral votes, a total that Trump called a “landslide” when states delivered him that number in 2016. (Trump ended up with 304 electoral votes because two electors defected.)

Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. Many of his campaign’s lawsuits have been thrown out of court.

A coalition of state election officials and the Trump administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have declared that the election was the most secure in history. Trump responded by firing the head of his agency, Chris Krebs.

NEWS CONFERENCE THURSDAY

SIDNEY POWELL, Trump attorney: “President Trump won by a landslide.”

THE FACTS: Two fabrications in one short remark.

Biden won. Needing 270 electoral votes to prevail, he has 306 and Trump has 232.

There was no landslide. Trump’s 306 electoral votes in 2016 did not make up a landslide win and Biden’s victory was not a landslide, either. But it was a comfortable and unassailable victory. And although it doesn’t matter in the outcome, Biden also leads the popular vote by nearly 6 million. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by about 3 million.

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POWELL, on Dominion Voting Systems electoral software used in many states: “One of (the software’s) most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden.”

THE FACTS: That didn’t happen. There’s “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” said the federal agency that oversees election security, in the statement joined by state and electoral-industry officials.

Against that, Powell offered the baseless allegation that it “probably” did.

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POWELL: “The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out.”

POWELL: “Smartmatic has been associated with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez, which is openly hostile to the United States.”

THE FACTS: To be clear, Chavez is not leading the Venezuelan government because he is dead, He died in 2013.

As well, Dominion does not have any ties to Venezuela, according to Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development nonprofit. Dominion was founded in Canada. The company says it is a competitor with Smartmatic, not a partner.

Smartmatic is incorporated in Florida by Venezuelan founders. The company states on its website that it’s not associated with governments or political parties of any country.

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POWELL: “What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States.”

THE FACTS: No such communist chicanery has been uncovered. The election security branch of Trump’s Homeland Security Department said the election was secure against foreign interference and all forms of mass manipulation.

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POWELL, on reports that a U.S. voting server is in Germany: “That is true, it’s somehow related to this but I do not know whether good guys got it or bad guys got it.”

THE FACTS: No, it’s not true. Powell is referring to a fictitious story that a server hosting evidence of voting irregularities in the Nov. 3 U.S. election was in Germany.

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas this month circulated the rumor that “U.S. Army forces” seized a server from a Frankfurt office, though he acknowledged it was something he saw on Twitter and “I don’t know the truth.” The Army said the claim was false.

Still, Powell presented the bogus story as fact.

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Swenson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Jude Joffe-Block in Phoenix and Amanda Seitz in Chicago contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

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Find AP Fact Checks at

For the first time since President Trump lost his bid for reelection, Vice President Mike Pence appeared on the campaign trail on Friday to boost Senate Republicans at a pair of rallies north of Atlanta.

Two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia remain to be decided in runoff races on Jan. 5. The outcome will dictate which party will run the upper chamber come next year.

And with Trump and Pence still declining to concede their loss, GOP has been left with a tricky argument in Georgia for a high-stakes Senate battle as they try to navigate the president’s false claims.

“As our election contests continue, here in Georgia and in courts across the country, I’ll make you promise,” Pence told supporters at an outdoor rally in Canton, Ga. “We’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We’re going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out.”

Pence and other Republicans, including GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are vying to win those Georgia Senate seats, are also arguing the state now remains a final line of defense against Democrats.

The House will remain Democratically controlled, though at a slimmer margin thanks to gains by Republicans there.

“We are the battleground,” Loeffler told supporters. “We are the firewall.”

The November elections have so far handed Republicans 50 seats when the new Congress convenes in January. They’ll need to win one of Georgia’s two runoff races to retain control of the chamber.

Democrats, on the other hand, will need a sweep of the Georgia seats to gain the majority. With President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris at the helm, Harris could break ties for a 50-member party that largely includes Democrats and two independent senators who caucus with them.

On Friday, Pence made clear he was in Georgia on Trump’s behalf.

“I’m here because I stand with President Donald Trump. And I’m here because President Donald Trump and I stand with Senator David Perdue and Senator Kelly Loeffler,” Pence said.

Since Election Day, Pence, like Trump, has largely kept out of public sight. Trump himself has been a source of disinformation, issuing false claims of widespread voter fraud and that he could overturn the election’s results.

Had they won, the GOP wouldn’t need the Georgia seats to retain their Senate majority as a Republican in the White House could break ties in their favor for a 51-member majority.

“This is the last line of defense. This is my last word to you today,” Perdue said in Canton as he was interrupted by cheers of “stop the steal!”

It was a nod to Trump’s false claims in the election targeting Democrats. For his part, Perdue paused, and then resumed with his same pitch without addressing the falsehood.

“What we have to do right now is hold the line,” Perdue said.

For Pence, his Friday campaign rally appearances are the most to date since the Nov. 3 elections. He spoke for more than 40 minutes at the two separate events in Canton and Gainesville.

Each rally drew hundreds of supporters, including families. Many waved Trump/Pence signs and other campaign merchandise, and boo’d at the mention of Democrats.

Pence also used the rallies as an opportunity to highlight the past work that the Trump administration has done, from supporting robust budgets for the military to the confirmation of new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

For their part, Perdue and Loeffler are facing shifting demographics in the state.

On Thursday, just as Pence’s motorcade made its way to its first rally in Canton, the state had said it had certified election results confirming Biden had won the state. He’s first Democrat to do so since 1992.

But the GOP has seen a good run in special elections in the past. That includes a costly 2017 Atlanta House district race where Democrat Jon Ossoff lost a challenge to his GOP counterpart.

Now, Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, is facing off against Perdue, a one-term senator who is seeking reelection.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat in January, is running against a popular Democrat in Raphael Warnock. Warnock is a reverend at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. was also a member.

Loeffler and Warnock are vying for a special election to fill the seat of retired Sen. Johnny Isakson.

In her short time in the seat, Loeffler has faced controversy over dumping $20 million in stocks after a closed-door Senate briefing on the coronavirus in January. Loeffler, who has held a stake in the WNBA team, the Atlanta Dreams, also came under attack for her remarks regarding the Black Lives Matter movement.

On Friday, she framed her attack against Democrats as one against an unrestrained party that could threaten conservatism.

“We are going to stand up for conservative values because look at what Donald Trump has done for our country,” she said to cheers to a crowd in Gainesville, which responded with chants of “U.S.A!” that Loeffler joined in on.

Biden was only mentioned by former Georgia Gov. and current Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue at the Friday rallies. Perdue was attacking the president-elect, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

“We’re going to re-elect Senator David Perdue and Senator Kelly Loeffler so that Schumer and Pelosi and Biden can’t have a blank check on America’s values,” Sonny Perdue said to cheers. “You’re the ones — America is counting on you and we’re counting on you.”

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s flailing effort resting on mendacity

Written by Week 12