Washington:

Right up to Election Day, Donald Trump and his backers were issuing warnings of voter fraud. But once his decisive victory took shape, the flood of misinformation slowed to a trickle.

Experts said the shift points to what opponents have long argued was Trump’s preemptive deployment of fraud claims in case he lost, setting the stage for him to challenge the results as he did in the 2020 election.

A sharp example came toward the end of voting on Tuesday when officials in the largest city of must-win Pennsylvania had to quickly deny Trump’s unfounded claim that police were responding to “massive cheating” in Philadelphia.

Those were the latest doubts the ex-TV star raised about election fraud. But the false accusations go back to his rejection of the 2020 results that ultimately led to his supporters trying to violently undo President Joe Biden’s poll win.

“As soon as the vote came in swinging their way, Republicans stopped making claims of election fraud late Tuesday, proving yet again it was all a gift,” Philip Mai, co-director of the Toronto-based Social Media Lab, told AFP.

The drop was particularly noticeable among members of the “Election Integrity Community,” a group on X started by Elon Musk’s America PAC, which encouraged its some 65,000 members to report irregularities.

When the polls opened on November 5, the group shared over 1,000 posts an hour, according to data collected by the nonprofit National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC).

The pace had fallen dramatically by the time the race was called for Trump in some crucial swing states early on November 6, blocking viable paths to victory for Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the days since the election, the group has posted fewer than 100 posts per hour, NCoC said.

The fraud mentions on some platforms popular on the right began to drop the day before the election — after rising considerably in the run-up, said Welton Chang, co-founder of Pyrra Technologies, a company that monitors fringe social networks.

“For one thing, Trump himself stopped talking about it,” Chang told AFP. “Part of this is a follow-the-leader effect.”

The drop-off in fraud narratives, researchers said, was particularly evident on alternative tech platforms catering to conservatives — including Trump’s own Truth Social.

– Trump ‘the conductor’ –

Not only did Trump go quiet on fraud claims after his Philadelphia allegations, but other Republicans have as well. 

Asked on CNN whether he believed the election was free and fair, lawmaker and hard-line Trump ally Jim Jordan said “I do.”

He declined to engage with the suggestion that Republicans only call foul when they lose.
Trump won all seven battleground states and he is on pace to capture the popular vote, which he did not do in his shock election victory in 2016.

The Democratic leadership has not questioned the 2024 election’s outcome, with both Biden and Harris conceding the loss and deeming the result a free and fair one.

However, there were 30,300 mentions of the hashtag #DoNotConcedeKamala with one of the words rigged, fraud, or stolen on Musk’s social media platform X the morning after the election, data showed.  

Danielle Lee Tomson, research manager at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, said an isolated number of people on the left have cast doubt on the integrity of the vote.

“No major candidate or political organizer has amplified it,” she told AFP. “It is diffuse and significantly smaller because there is no leadership spreading it, whereas on the right that was the case in 2020 and 2022.”

She noted that on the right there was evidence from even the early voting period this year that Republicans and MAGA-affiliated influencers — shorthand for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — were discussing potential election fraud.

“Think of it like Trump is the conductor, (and) there’s a symphony of media and legal infrastructure to really make sure that he won,” Tomson said. “That’s what they built.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Florida:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Christians on Friday that if they vote for him this November, “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

It was not clear what the former president meant by his remarks, in an election campaign where his Democratic opponents accuse him of being a threat to democracy, and after his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat to President Joe Biden, an effort that led to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of his comments.

Trump was speaking at an event organized by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump said: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

He added: “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump said.

In an interview with Fox News in December, Trump said that if he won the Nov. 5 election he would be a dictator, but only on “day one”, to close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling.

Democrats have seized on that comment. Trump has since said the remarks were a joke.

If Trump wins a second term in the White House, he can serve only four more years as president. U.S. presidents are limited to two terms, consecutive or not, under the U.S. Constitution.

In May, speaking at a National Rifle Association gathering, Trump quipped about serving more than two terms as president.

He referred to the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, the only president to serve more than two terms. The two-term limit was added after Roosevelt’s presidency.

“You know, FDR, 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” Trump asked the NRA crowd.

Trump’s remarks on Friday pointed to the need for both parties to energize their base voters ahead of what will likely be a closely fought election. Trump has enjoyed loyal support from evangelicals in the past two elections.

The race has abruptly tightened after the decision by Biden to end his reelection bid and with his vice president, Kamala Harris, becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Recent opinion polls show Trump’s significant lead over Biden has been largely erased since the torch was passed to Harris.

Jason Singer, a Harris campaign spokesperson, in a statement did not directly address Trump’s remarks about Christians not having to vote again.

Singer described Trump’s overall speech as “bizarre” and “backward looking”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Donald Trump. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case has been postponed until at least September after the judge agreed Tuesday to weigh the possible impact of a new Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.

Trump had been scheduled to face sentencing July 11 on his New York conviction on felony charges of falsifying business records. He denies any wrongdoing.

The postponement sets the sentencing for Sept. 18, well after the Republican National Convention, where Trump is set formally to accept the party’s nomination for president in this year’s race. The convention runs from July 15 to 18.

A Supreme Court ruling Monday granted broad immunity protections to presidents, while also restricting prosecutors from citing any official acts as evidence in trying to prove a president’s unofficial actions violated the law.

Hours after it was issued, Trump’s attorney requested that New York Judge Juan M. Merchan set aside the jury’s guilty verdict and delay the sentencing to consider how the high court’s ruling and could affect the hush money case.

He wrote that he’ll rule Sept. 6, and the next date in the case would be Sept. 18, “if necessary.”

Manhattan prosecutors said Tuesday that they wouldn’t oppose putting off the sentencing for at least two weeks.

In their filing Monday, defense attorneys argued that Manhattan prosecutors had placed “highly prejudicial emphasis on official-acts evidence,” including Trump’s social media posts and witness testimony about Oval Office meetings.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that they believed those arguments were “without merit,” but noted they were not opposed to adjourning the sentencing as the judge considers the matter.

Trump was convicted May 30 on 34 counts of falsifying business records arising from what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election.

Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 after meeting him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. Trump has repeatedly denied that claim, saying at his June 27 debate with President Joe Biden: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.”

Prosecutors said the Daniels payment was part of a broader scheme to buy the silence of people who might have gone public during the campaign with embarrassing stories alleging he had extramarital sex. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.

Trump will be required to be present in Merchan’s Manhattan courtroom when he is sentenced.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.