November 2, 2020

"We don't want to have Pennsylvania, where you have a political governor, a very partisan guy. ... We don't want to be in a position where he's allowed, every day, to watch ballots come in. See if we can only find 10,000 more ballots."

Said Trump, quoted in "Scoop: Trump's plan to declare premature victory" (Axios). 

The purported "scoop" — which is not the quote I have in the post title — is attributed to "three sources familiar with his private comments." If I understand journalese correctly, the sources do not claim to have heard Trump say whatever they say he said, they've just heard about it, whether second hand or third hand or eighth hand or whatever, there's no way to know. 

I presume Trump's idea is to claim victory whenever it's possible and strategically advantageous. That's an utterly mundane thing for Trump to have said. 

Obviously, people on both sides have to be intensely worried about how the votes will be counted and they are massively prepared to fight in court and in the political arena. And they are already fighting, such as by planting a "scoop" like this. The problem for Democrats is well understood: Trump may appear to be ahead on election night, because his voters are more likely to vote in person, and Biden will need to build up his numbers after election day, as the mail-in vote is counted. 

So Biden people need to get us to concentrate on the longer time frame, in which the numbers dribble in, but Trump will want us to fixate on what happened on Election Day and to fear that funny business is going on as Democrats look for whatever is the number of votes they will be able to see that they need.

That could get ugly, and Axios is helping Biden, showing us how to conceptualize the coming struggle:
Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 — a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats — are evidence of election fraud.... Trump's team is preparing to claim baselessly that if that process changes the outcome in Pennsylvania from the picture on election night, then Democrats would have "stolen" the election. Trump's advisers have been laying the groundwork for this strategy for weeks, but this is the first account of Trump explicitly discussing his election night intentions....

Boldface added. Trump's strategy is quite ordinary, merely politically strategic, as is the effort to portray it as devilish and alarming. 

72 comments:

TRISTRAM said...

Considering the dem PA AG just said “when all the votes are counted, Biden will win’ (how very Russian), I can understand the concern.

LakeLevel said...

" Trump's strategy is quite ordinary, merely politically strategic, as is the effort to portray it as devilish and alarming."

So you admit that the news media is made up of political operatives.

tim maguire said...

Funny how predictions of the future are derided as false and baseless. It’s become a mantra in the liberal media to the point where I read “without evidence” as meaning no more than “we hope not.” Also extremely tiresome is the way normal, perfectly appropriate political behavior is portrayed as sinister when it’s a liberal describing Trump. (This may be equally true of the right-wing media and Biden, but it’s hard to tell when there is so little right-wing media and so little action from Biden to comment on.)

Two more things:
1) Democrats have been underperforming in mail-in voting so they’re unlikely to be rescued by a trove of late-counted Biden ballots.
2) Even with mail-in voting, the logistics of voter fraud make it impractical to steal more than a tiny slice of the vote. It’s still true that they can’t steal it if it’s not close.

iowan2 said...

Counting the votes, needs to transition to counting ballots cast. By midnight 11/3 there should be a hard, number of ballots cast.

Mark said...

Proud boys standing by for Wednesday morning, ready to destroy uncounted ballots once Trump prematurely declares victory.

Enjoy being on that side of history, Ann.

gilbar said...

ballots received, what Six days after the election? WITHOUT postmarks, will still be counted
what Possible problem with that could there be?

It's Not like they can spend 5 days finding people who didn't vote, and getting their votes
[oh, Wait; yes, yes it IS like that]
It's Not like they can spend 5 days finding people who didn't vote, and voting for them
[oh, Wait; yes, yes it IS like that]

gilbar said...

it's funny how 100% of the late "votes" will be for Jo Biden
it's funny how well in excess of 100% of the people in Pennsylvania will end up "voting"

iowan2 said...

From a mathematical standpoint, I cant square, the massive number of early vote in person, and massive number of mail in ballots, with Biden coming from behind a week after the election. How can there be enough late votes to sway even a single precinct?

Kevin said...

So Biden people need to get us to concentrate on the longer time frame, in which the numbers dribble in, but Trump will want us to fixate on what happened on Election Day and to fear that funny business is going on as Democrats look for whatever is the number of votes they will be able to see that they need.

It’s not a conspiracy theory.

It’s how Al Franken got elected.

rehajm said...

One side is going to be very wrong about their predictions. PA may not matter...

Birkel said...

The coming realization that 15-20% of blacks who are registered Democratical will have voted for Trump has not yet dawned on the Leftist Collectivists.

The votes they would have to fake - to lie about, to manufacture illegally - will be far too many to be acceptable.
Democraticals will give up the ghost by Thursday.

Leftist Collectivists will try to start Civil War II.

cacimbo said...

Trump is right.PA allows ballots to come in for three days after election, in NC it is NINE.Blatantly corrupt.

Wince said...

That they used the term “baselessly” instead of “without evidence” is a tell that they expect there to be evidenced Democrat shenanigans.

Leland said...

the sources do not claim to have heard Trump say whatever they say he said, they've just heard about it, whether second hand or third hand or eighth hand or whatever, there's no way to know.

Doesn't this fail the Twitter test?

readering said...

Nothing ordinary about Trump's conduct. Sad.

My name goes here. said...

I agree with AA that Trump's comments are pretty standard stuff.

My prediction is that all of this talk and hype about PA is a distraction. That the Trump campaign is purposefully talking up all of the possibilities about what they will do in PA instead of talking about something else. If I am right (spoiler alert: I am wrong often) the question is what is the media being distracted from? Get out the vote operations? Ballot harvesting (in favor of Trump) in CA? Their ground game in Nevada?

I do not believe the polls, it appears that nobody does. The only questions are how wrong are they?

In that vein in 1996 the polls said that Clinton had a +16 advantage over Dole. In reality it was +8. In 2016 Hillary was up in the polls +11 in Wisconsin, Trump won it by 1.

Political Junkie said...

Related since this is about the election.

Check out 2020 Presidential Election Interactive Map. Let's you pick different states and immediately updates overall electoral count.

One crazy way to get a 269 269 tie is Trump loses MI,PA,WI,but wins MN, the 1 EV out of ME and wins all of NE EVs. Assumes Trump wins all the other states he won in 2016.

Temujin said...

A case study in Journalism! Don't just report when you can report and interject opinion at the same time.

I'll always wonder how people claiming to love their country are so opposed to making sure their elections are safe, controlled, and not corrupted. Why the fight over voter IDs in this day and age? Why the need to allow groups of ballots to be harvested and handled by strangers working for a political party? Why even consider accepting ballots even one day after election day. We have four years between Presidential elections. Can we not get ourselves to get an ID, mail in a ballot on time, or just show up and vote?

Must we spoon feed even our citizenship?

Sebastian said...

Well, since the PA process is extraordinary, it can't be ordinary to "portray it as devilish and alarming." Sure, Dems always play counting games. But PA is unusual, and Trump is right to be alert.

gadfly said...

As long as we are permitted to read the Trump mind as Ann does here, I cannot imagine anything that our impaired president says or does to ever be intended to be "mundane". He likely cannot define the word. Admittedly he sometimes gets confused and spouts unintelligible stream-of-consciousness nonsense, a likely dementia-related faux pa - but when somewhat rational in a narcissistic sense, he is always out to be at the top of the news.

Darrell said...

Is somebody keeping track of those "spoiled" ballots that were reprinted--hundreds of thousands because they were preparing to send out unsolicited ballots? All the other "extras" nationwide because of the same reason?

Darrell said...

Didn't Philly put up a 0% Republican vote count some years ago?
They have form.

Darrell said...

Commie Mark sees Proud Boy/Boogaloo problems.
Forget Antifa and BLM actually doing shit right now.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

3 days of extra counting to cheat.

We all know what happens when leftists are allowed to cheat. They cheat.

The collective left are lying liars who lie and cheating cheaters who cheat.

tim maguire said...

cacimbo said...Trump is right.PA allows ballots to come in for three days after election, in NC it is NINE.Blatantly corrupt.

In NC, they need to be postmarked by election day. In PA, they don't need to be postmarked at all, which means they have about 48 hours to produce as many ballots as they need.

iowan2 said...
From a mathematical standpoint, I cant square, the massive number of early vote in person, and massive number of mail in ballots, with Biden coming from behind a week after the election. How can there be enough late votes to sway even a single precinct?


This is the logistical problem that will limit fraud. Let's say on election night, Trump is ahead by 100,000 votes. These doctored late votes cannot be more than 55%-60% pro-Biden. Let's say 60%. That means, for every 100,000 votes that come in, the Dems gain 20,000 (60 Biden - 40 Trump = 20 net gain). To pick up 120,000 votes and the win, Dems would need to manufacture 600,000 late non-postmarked votes. How many postal workers have to participate AND keep quiet about it? How will it look when 600 sacks of non-postmarked mail appears that favors Biden by 20 points?

No, even under PA's crazy scheme, they still can't steal it if it's not close.

tim maguire said...

Mark said...
Proud boys standing by for Wednesday morning, ready to destroy uncounted ballots once Trump prematurely declares victory.


If you're going to live in a fantasy world, at least make it a happy fantasy. Why would you choose a fiction that is so dark and dreary? What's the appeal?

sterlingblue said...

Media stories put these opinionated adverbs and adjectives into their stories all the time now, something they wouldn't dared have done as recently as four years ago.

They have plunged into propaganda at warp speed.

steve uhr said...

Don’t see how it is a “problem for democrats” that it may appear they are behind on Tuesday. It doesn’t mean anything. The only thing that means anything is who is ahead once all the votes are counted.

TosaGuy said...

Scott Walker was winning in 2018 when Milwaukee “found” 50K ballots at 2:00 am.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

lifted:

"Votes being counted" translates as "votes being manufactured for Biden in the factory next to the Wuhan wet market."

DanTheMan said...

>>dementia-related faux pa

Is that like a faux-pas? Or is "faux pa" a fake dad?

Or did you "stutter"?

Lurker21 said...


Both sides suspect the other will cheat, but only the Democrats have the major media to push their theory and label Trump's false.

I don't think the Proud Boys are so large a group or so organized or politically connected enough that they could get their hands on ballots and throw the election to Trump.

DanTheMan said...

>>Didn't Philly put up a 0% Republican vote count some years ago?

Yes. In 59 districts, Obama won with 19,000 votes to ZERO for Romney. Not one single mismarked ballot, or accidental R vote. Not one.

Of course, the MSM did a lot of handwaving to explain all of this away, as if it was perfectly normal that 20,000 people could fill out ballots without even one voting for the Republican.

Tommy Duncan said...

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/06/russ-feingold-games-not-over-until-i.html

DanTheMan said...

>>These doctored late votes cannot be more than 55%-60% pro-Biden. Let's say 60%.

Let's say 90%. There will be a lot of "experts" explaining this as "perfectly normal" using "science".

JeanE said...

Sounds like he wants to earn enough votes on election day that the result isn't close and therefore not easily altered by "finding" just 10,000 votes for Biden. We have now reached the point where Trump working to earn many more votes than his opponent is considered cheating.

Michael K said...

Blogger steve uhr said...
Don’t see how it is a “problem for democrats” that it may appear they are behind on Tuesday. It doesn’t mean anything. The only thing that means anything is who is ahead once all the votes are counted.


steve agrees with Comrade Stalin. What matters is who counts the votes.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Trump's team is preparing to correctly claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3 — an illegitimate count expected to favor Democrats — are evidence of election fraud.... Trump's team is preparing to claim correctly that if that process changes the outcome in Pennsylvania from the picture on election night, then Democrats would have "stolen" the election. Trump's advisers have been laying the groundwork for this strategy for weeks, but this is the first time we've invented anaccount of Trump explicitly discussing his election night intentions

FIFY

Jaq said...

I just drove down to Florida, and on my way, as is my habit, I visited the graves of my parents and my brother in Pennsylvania. It’s fracking country, I am pretty sure that if you set up a well in the cemetery you would hit gas, shame my dad sold 20 acres of land just adjacent to the cemetery for almost nothing in the ‘70s. It so much fracking country that there is a car wash in one of the little villages strung along the little highway with a huge sign out front that says that gas workers must not use the carwash to wash their muddy trucks. Anyway, in 2016, there were plenty of Trump signs and zero HIllery signs that I could see in PA, but this year the Trump signs are cheek to jowl, and this time there are a few Biden signs, but they were always in towns.

When I was a teenager, you couldn’t get a job at McDonalds in the area, without being waitlisted out months, well my HS girlfriend got one, but she was pretty hot, I picked vegetables at a truck farm since it was the only work I could find. Now though, you can get jobs driving truck versions of ATVs through the woods and fields, working with your hands and brain, and making good money. This is a stump jumping redneck’s version of a cushy job at The New Yorker.

I also passed a Trump truck parade in Upstate NY on the interstate that took me four minutes to pass going the other way at 70 mph.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

>>These doctored late votes cannot be more than 55%-60% pro-Biden. Let's say 60%.

The box of votes the Milwaukee vote creators "found" the night of the Evers election were ~70% for Evers.

There were significantly MORE Evers than the rest of the votes that were counted that night.

Any time Democrat vote counters "find" a box of ballots, it's fraud
Any counting of ballots received after Election Day without a postmark is fraud
Any counting of ballots received after Election Day, in s State where the legislature passed law doesn't allow the counting of ballots received when those ballots were received, is fraud

Any attempt by the Democrats to steal this election with fraud will be strongly resisted, By Any Means Necessary

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Mark said...
Proud boys standing by for Wednesday morning, ready to destroy uncounted ballots once Trump prematurely declares victory.

HAHAHAHAHA

All 20 of them?

MeatPopscicle1234 said...

Again... Several battleground states have made insane last minute illegal changes to their voting rules... No signature matching, no postmark required and can be “found” for over a week post Election Day ... No chain of custody... no paper trail... just pallets and pallets of ballots being counterfeited and delivered by the truckload in the dead of night to “undisclosed” locations for days and days after the election... for as long as it takes to “flip” the win from Trump to Biden... at which point they will stop counting, declare Biden the Winner and scream that Trump is trying to steal the election when he refuses to concede and correctly points out the blatant fraud and cheating.

I hope Trump and his people are on top of this and ready to fully expose / arrest anyone caught cheating. Otherwise we will have a repeat of 2018 and within 6 months Kamala will be President and America will be lost for good

Jaq said...

I see it written in the propaganda press, at least from blue check Twitter, that promises of jobs coming back to PA were empty so it’s mysterious why people their aren’t angry at Trump. Utter bullshit, lies, the New York Times’ and WaPo’s stock and trade. Stuff like that is easy to check, too, BTW.

Jaq said...

"Yes. In 59 districts, Obama won with 19,000 votes to ZERO for Romney. Not one single mismarked ballot, or accidental R vote. Not one.”

When Snopes looked into this, they said that there really weren’t any Republicans there because when they spot checked people who registered Republican, either nobody at the address had ever heard of them, or the addresses were not valid.

So you tell me, you are faking up a stack of registrations, do you make them 100% Democrat? Or do you throw in a few Republicans to cover your tracks? I think that the Snopes article that purports to refute the fraud really just demonstrates it for all to see. But they became disinterested in thinking any deeper as soon as they got something they could pretend was the answer they wanted.

gilbar said...

One crazy way to get a 269 269 tie is Trump loses MI,PA,WI,but wins MN,

and this would be a time to remind folks, that In The Event of a TIE...
The US House of Representatives chooses; BUT! it is by State Delegation
So, only 50 votes. Currently, there are
26 states with a Republican Majority in their delegation
23 states with a Democrat Majority in their delegation
and Michigan, which has a 7/7 split delegation

Of course, it's Not the 116th congress that votes, it is the 117th (or, IS IT?)

Sam L. said...

OHHHHH, that TRUMP!!!! Stirring up them who NEED stirring.

Birkel said...

How many black folks in Philly actually did vote for Trump in those infamous 100% Obama districts?

My guess is Trump has their names and that they are willing to testify.
If their votes disappear, people will go to prison and the vote counts will be ignored.

Democraticals will call this "voter suppression" but they are lying liars who lie.

JAORE said...

And yet we remain cruelly neutral.

Like when the dog piddles on the carpet repeatedly and you don't punish him because the other dog isn't as cute.

Enlighten-NewJersey said...

NJ sent all registered voters a mail-in ballot and will only allow provisional ballots to be cast at polling places on Nov.3. It took 7 days to process that my ballot was received via a county vote drop box. Next they’ll determine whether or not my ballot can be accepted and finally, if accepted, they’ll add my votes to their tabulations. It took the state weeks to determine the results of the primary with the same system they are using for the general election. NJ is not a swing state, but the NJ 7 house race may be important, having flipped from Republican to Democrat.in 2018. Democrats have sown the seeds of chaos across the country,

Greg The Class Traitor said...

tim maguire said...
In NC, they need to be postmarked by election day.

Many years back I worked at a small company that had a postage machine.

I was able to change the date on the machine, to postmark something for the day before I actually mailed it.

I don't think NC is going to be close (not given the way the early voting has gone. The Dems are toast there). But when the law says "ballots must be received by", there is no shred of legitimacy in changing that

Achilles said...

>>These doctored late votes cannot be more than 55%-60% pro-Biden. Let's say 60%.

59 districts in Philly, with nearly 20,000 votes cast, reported zero votes for Mitt Romney.

This is mathematically impossible.

Everyone knows it was fraud.

Even Mark with his stupid Proud Boys fantasy knows that the Democrats committed obvious and undeniable fraud.

rcocean said...

Given the amount of MSM LIES about Trump, we need to add the following to ANY MSM story about Trump based on anonymous sources:

WITHOUT EVIDENCE, the WaPo/NYT/WSJ/etc. Claims:

The NYT/Wapo and all the others have LIED, and LIED, and LIED, again about Trump and their "Sources". Quit believing them!

rcocean said...

If Biden wins Pennsylvanian, he should sent some candy and a thank-you note to Justice Roberts.

rcocean said...

I'm sure the Democrats have 3 or 4 cars with trunks full of BIden votes already on tap.

Ice Nine said...

The lefties are expressing great outrage (snore) at the idea that Trump would do this. And yes, it is all just strategizing. But in purest terms, a candidate's declaring a win when it is plain that he is has probably won but before the last vote is counted, is no different than and no more outrageous than a candidate's conceding the election when it is apparent that he has probably lost. And the latter is done all the time without so much as an eyebrow raised.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

tim in vermont said...
"Yes. In 59 districts, Obama won with 19,000 votes to ZERO for Romney. Not one single mismarked ballot, or accidental R vote. Not one.”

When Snopes looked into this, they said that there really weren’t any Republicans there because when they spot checked people who registered Republican, either nobody at the address had ever heard of them, or the addresses were not valid.


That was impressively dishonest, even for the modern Snopes.

The likelihood that 19,000 people could all vote, and not one of them could screw up and punching the button / push the chad / fill in the bubble for the wrong candidate is essentially 0.

I expect that if the "PA election results" have Trump behind, his team will demand to see every single ballot in any district that is 100% Biden. and I expect that what they will find is that there are ballots that have Trump marked, but that they are "double votes" with Biden also marked.

Because the only way you get those results is if the people handling the ballots are doing something to mass mark every ballot with a Biden vote

TreeJoe said...

As someone from PA, I'm extremely troubled by the way our vote has been setup to fail. Even foregoing fraud, it's a process ripe for disaster. This is Iowa Caucus all over again.

The mail is EXTREMELY late right now in PA, with first class mail within cities taking longer than 5 days >60% of the time. Unclear if that's business days, M-Sat, or what. And to allow unpostmarked mail in ballots during this? Insane.

On top of that Gov Wolf has been exercising some really crazy authority and some demonstrable corruption with his own family businesses. He's not exactly well loved right now.

So you just look at it and go: A process which SHOULD have immediate certainty and confidence is set up to be a complete disaster.

Now you add the possibility of fraud on top of that. Now you've got a recipe for violence - both political and actual.

Yancey Ward said...

Don’t see how it is a “problem for democrats” that it may appear they are behind on January 20th 2021. It doesn’t mean anything. The only thing that means anything is who is ahead once all the votes are counted.

Douglas B. Levene said...

If Pennsylvania actually counts ballots that are received after Election Day and that do not have a postmark showing that they were mailed before Election Day, and if the number of those ballots exceeds the margin of victory, then, yes, that would be an election tainted by, perhaps determined by, fraud. I suppose in that case the courts could call each of the voters who cast a suspicious ballot for examination and cross examination to determine if the vote was actually mailed before Election Day, but I don't think that's what the Democrats are proposing.

hombre said...

“That's an utterly mundane thing for Trump to have said.” Everything Trump says is subject to media spin and Biden lies. Never mundane.

Everybody knows Democrats cheat, especially Democrats. Ask Al Frankenstein. The trick for Democrats and their mediaswine consorts is to construe Republican efforts to prevent it as “voter suppression.” This never changes.

narciso said...

You see why they got the ppe money.

DavidUW said...

At the rate I'm seeing turnout, there's gonna have to be an unusual amount of fraud over the usual amount of fraud from Philly. Not saying they can't, but once again, the democrats are projecting here.

mikee said...

AlGore tried to steal the 2000 election.
Hillary refused to accept the 2016 election.
2020 Dems are planning to riot nationwide.

These are not the actions of a healthy political organization.

Birkel said...

The Electoral College votes on December 15.
That was decided in Bush v Gore to be a firm deadline not subject to judicial review.

The election will end on that day without regard to further counting.
Perhaps Democraticals hope to cause problems by withholding vote tallies in some states until after that date.

Civil War II will not be fun.

mikee said...

AlGore tried to steal the 2000 election.
Hillary refused to accept the 2016 election.
2020 Dems are planning to riot nationwide.

These are not the actions of a healthy political organization.

Jaq said...

Given what the Philly Enquirer, I think it was, found as reported by Snopes about Republican registrations looking like they were fraudulent, I think that it would be a good idea for the Trump side, if it comes down to a battle, to check and see if these ‘Republicans’ actually voted, and if they did, check to see if their registration is actually for a real person at a real address.

Jaq said...

"All 20 of them?”

Are they even allowed across the Canadian border right now?

hombre said...

Democrats have destroyed the integrity of federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, the polls, the mainstream media and the impeachment process. They have broken campaign spending records. All of it to gain control of the country. Why would anybody believe that they would fail to engage in widespread election fraud to achieve that end?

hombre said...

I see readering and a couple of the other conscienceless TDS trolls are here. Shouldn’t they be at Democrat headquarters filling out dead people’s ballots?

Yancey Ward said...

"I see readering and a couple of the other conscienceless TDS trolls are here. Shouldn’t they be at Democrat headquarters filling out dead people’s ballots?"

Requires a skill set well beyond them.

Rory said...

"These are not the actions of a healthy political organization."

Plus they fixed their presidential primaries the last two cycles.

Jaq said...

What the fuck was Hunter Biden pitching to China with this detailed map of US shale plays?

https://twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1323345058901430272

I know, you aren’t going to vote for Hunter. You didn’t vote for him in 2008 or 2012 either, and yet, you really did. “Buy one, get one free!” as the Democrats used to say.