PRE-EMPTIVE DENIAL

Trump’s Online Army Hatches Sinister Election Plot

The president is pushing his supporters to reject the midterm election results before they’re even in.

President Donald Trump and his supporters are on a blitz to persuade voters to reject his party’s expected midterm trouncing as his administration gears up to challenge the results in court.

Roughly 600 pro-MAGA accounts and media outlets have pushed more than 7,000 online messages casting doubt over U.S. election integrity since the start of this year, according to a Tuesday analysis by the Washington Post.

MONEY TALKS

Trump Dangles $1M Bounty Cash Giveaway in Election Panic

Farrah Tomazin

Many of their claims have focused on the idea that noncitizen voting and mail-in ballots threaten to enable widespread fraud at next Tuesday’s polls.

Play Video

But studies by even hardline pro-Trump think tanks have consistently shown that noncitizens account for as little as 0.0001 percent of total ballots cast since 2000.

And the 80-year-old president seems to trust mail-in voting enough to have used it at least seven times over the past eight years—including twice in Florida this year alone.

Voter fury over Trump’s war with Iran and its impact on already widespread unaffordability has helped Democrats gain an astonishing nine-point lead ahead of the November 3 midterms.

Analysts expect Democrats will likely take control of the House and have suggested that even the Senate could now be up for grabs.

A series of pre-emptive legal actions has signaled the White House will challenge any such result in court while the online blitz by MAGA figures suggests a push to drum up support ahead of that fight.

“We’re making the presumption that the president will not accept the results,” Connecticut Democratic Rep. Jim Himes told reporters last week, adding that he expects Trump “is going to pull out all the stops.”

The president has never conceded his 2020 loss to Joe Biden and repeatedly claimed that defeat was the result of nefarious forces tampering with voting machines and other violations.

He has made more than 300 statements casting doubt over the integrity of U.S. elections during his second term and on Monday pledged $1 million to anyone whose tip-offs on voter fraud lead to a successful conviction.

MAGA’s claims of rigged tech have consistently fallen apart under closer scrutiny and now seem to have been broadly dropped in favor of noncitizen voting fears and concerns over mail-in fraud.

Those themes are currently circulating among pro-Trump figures online at almost double their rate during the 2024 election cycle, the Post found.

Trump’s disgraced former strategist Steve Bannon told his War Room podcast listeners last month that Democrats have hatched a plot to make sure “illegal aliens can vote en masse.”

“They understand that if you restrict it to American citizens, it’s impossible for them to win,” he said. “They have to cheat to win.”

Far-right influencer Bill Mitchell has echoed those comments with X posts claiming “voter fraud is the ONLY way Democrats ever win swing districts.”

Online commentator Gunther Eagleman, real name David Freeman, similarly wrote on Saturday that “19 noncitizens were charged in two swing states in one day, and Democrats still swear this never happens.”

Polling shows the blitz appears to be working, with 45 percent of Republican voters saying they believe noncitizens will be effectively stopped from casting ballots compared to roughly 90 percent of Democratic supporters who said the same, according to the Pew Research Center.

Messages casting doubt on the electoral system have gone out alongside Justice Department demands that California set aside more than 20,000 ballots it claims noncitizens will cast, though a judge shot down that bid on Monday.

DONALD LAME DUCK

Nate Silver Makes Bombshell Prediction About End of Trump

Ewan Palmer

Prosecutors have also pushed the courts to prevent certification in Alaska if a Republican candidate loses the vote there, claiming voters are likely to get confused by an independent with a similar name.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon said Friday that her division will send “the largest number of election observers to the polls” and that the DOJ “will be the eyes and ears for any violations.”

BRAZIL NUTS

Trump Desperately Spins MAGA Ally’s Embarrassing Defeat

Will Neal

It’s a routine practice that nevertheless comes as Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out dispatching federal agents and even the military to polling stations to prevent supposed irregularities on Election Day.

“I’d do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections,” he said of those prospects earlier in May. “We have to have honest elections.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Will NealReporter

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.