President Donald Trump has unleashed a bombardment of debunked election conspiracy theories as he pressures Senate Republicans to do whatever it takes to pass new voting restrictions.
The president shared a flurry of posts on his Truth Social platform pushing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and demanding that Senate Republicans pass new legislation that experts say would disenfranchise millions of Americans.
After sharing one final post late Tuesday demanding the state of Georgia “take over” elections in Fulton County, the president apparently went to bed, only to fire up Truth Social a few hours later and post more baseless claims.
“In the 2020 election, states using Dominion voting machines allegedly switched 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden and deleted 2.7 MILLION Trump votes, including 1 MILLION in Pennsylvania,” read one of the false posts that Trump shared.
Another post included a video of Sen. Chuck Schumer from 1996 and said, “PASS THE SAVE ACT!!!”
Last week, House Republicans passed the SAVE America Act, an updated version of a bill that stalled last year in the Senate that would put onerous new requirements on voters and county election officials.
Voters would be required to appear in person and present proof of their citizenship when registering to vote, including providing a passport or a physical copy of their birth certificate, along with proof of residency in the state where they’re voting.
Women who changed their last names after getting married would need to provide additional documents, such as a marriage certificate, to prove their citizenship.
The law would take effect immediately, even though about 21 million Americans don’t have ready access to the necessary documents, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
Most voting by mail would be banned, and voters would have to present a photo ID when casting a ballot.
Photo IDs are already required in 36 states, but the latest version of the Act imposes even stricter ID requirements by prohibiting student IDs and many tribal IDs.
It further requires states to run their voter rolls through a citizenship verification tool created by the Department of Homeland Security.
Many states already use that system, which returned just 0.04 percent of voter verification cases as noncitizens last year, the Bipartisan Policy Center reported this month.
Other states, however, have refused to turn over their voter files to the Trump administration over concerns that the data could be misused—concerns that were validated when news broke in January that Elon Musk’s DOGE team had provided private data to an election denier group, according to the Brennan Center.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota announced this week that 50 Republican senators supported the Senate version of the bill.
That’s enough to bring the measure to the floor for debate but not enough to overcome the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to end debate on most legislation and move to a final vote.
During his election posting spree, Trump—who is facing record-low approval ratings—boosted calls for Thune to end the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE Act.
The president shared a post speculating that he would soon “unveil evidence that foreign powers meddled in the 2020 election,” forcing Thune to “cave” on the filibuster and pass the legislation.
“Crooked Elections cannot be allowed in the U.S.A.,” Trump wrote cryptically above the post.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
On Tuesday, Thune said he didn’t have the support needed to end the filibuster.
But he plans to open debate on the SAVE Act and force Democrats to explain their opposition to the bill so that Republicans can campaign on the issue during the midterms, Fox News reported.
Democrats say the burdens created by the bill far outweigh the scope of the problem that it claims to solve.
For example, when Utah performed a citizenship review of its entire 2 million-person voter registration list, it found just one confirmed case of a noncitizen registering to vote, and zero cases of noncitizen voting.
