Trump wants to keep counting ballots — but only where he thinks he can win

Donald Trump wants to keep counting ballots — but only in states he believes he might still win.

After prematurely declaring victory early Wednesday morning, Trump launched a full-scale attack on remaining mail-in ballots that had not yet been counted in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — all states he appears poised to lose or faces a tough path to winning.

“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan,” he tweeted. “So bad for our Country!”

In a follow-up tweet, moments later, he added, “They are working hard to make up 500,000 vote advantage in Pennsylvania disappear — ASAP. Likewise, Michigan and others!”

Twitter quickly marked the tweet as misleading and limited its audience.

Arizona, meanwhile, was a different story.

The Associated Press and Fox News called Arizona by early Wednesday, with former vice president Joe Biden projected to win the state by a solid margin. But the Trump campaign said in a press call that morning they were still waiting for ballot counting to be completed and expected him to win by about 30,000 votes in the state.

“We feel like the president is in very, very, very good position this morning. If all legally cast ballots are counted, the president will win,” said campaign manager Bill Stepien. He did not elaborate on what he meant by “legally cast ballots.”

The campaign also criticized Fox News for declaring Biden the winner in Arizona on election night, saying that “last night, we dug in very hard on” the cable network.

Similarly in Nevada, where Biden is ahead by 0.6% via the New York Times and AP as of Wednesday morning, the campaign wants to continue the vote counts there.

“We very much believe that Nevada is still in play,” said campaign adviser Jason Miller.

The Trump campaign, however, is burying several crucial details.

In Pennsylvania, Trump had an 11-point lead as of Wednesday morning, according to the Times. As Pennsylvania’s secretary of state noted, there are still over 1.4 million absentee votes that need to be counted. More are expected to arrive in the coming days as well.

New York Times polling expert Nate Cohn warned on Wednesday that “looks can be deceiving” and that Trump is, in fact, in “quite a bit of danger here.”

“The preponderance of the remaining vote is mail absentee, and Mr. Biden has won mail absentee votes in Pennsylvania by a margin of 78 percent to 21 percent,” Cohn wrote.

If Biden wins those absentee votes “by the same margin he’s been winning them so far,” he added, “it would net him 800,000 votes, enough for him to pull ahead.”

Trump’s rage over a prior Supreme Court ruling that allowed ballots in Pennsylvania to be counted up to three days after Election Day, then, is understandable. If he stands to lose with those mail ballots fully counted — especially if he is currently ahead in the state — it makes sense he might try to stop that from happening.

“The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one,” he tweeted on Monday. “It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!”

In Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump had similarly been leading earlier in the vote count, but as of Wednesday morning, Biden had pulled ahead by a slim margin of less than 1 point. Wisconsin was later predicted to go blue for Biden, with Michigan not far behind.

Trump, predictably, blasted vote counts in ‘key states’ around that same time.

“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong!” he tweeted.

Twitter once again labeled his tweet as misleading.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.