8 things Trump has blamed for his landslide loss to Biden

Donald Trump on Monday continued to look for scapegoats for his landslide loss in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, adding Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to his list of people and things responsible for his defeat.

Biden won the election by more than 6 million more popular votes and garnered 306 Electoral College votes — the same number of Electoral College votes Trump got in 2016. Trump had called that margin a “landslide” win.

Trump is pushing baseless conspiracy theories to explain away his drubbing at the ballot box, both to avoid taking any responsibility for his performance in the election and to try to get Republican lawmakers and the federal courts he’s stacked with his own appointees to overturn the will of the voters and install him as the victor — even though he lost by more than 6 million votes and counting.

So far, his efforts to stage a coup have failed spectacularly, with judges throwing out lawsuits and GOP elected officials refusing to bend to his demands to ignore their states’ election results and make Trump the winner.

The transition to a new administration has already begun, and President-elect Biden is set to be inaugurated in January.

Here are eight people and things Trump has scapegoated:

Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is the latest person Trump is blaming for not helping to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

After a recount of the state’s ballots found that Biden still won the state by 12,670 votes, and courts refused to toss out absentee ballots to help Trump win, Trump said Monday that Kemp should simply use his powers as governor to overturn the results.

“Why won’t Governor @BrianKempGA, the hapless Governor of Georgia, use his emergency powers, which can be easily done, to overrule his obstinate Secretary of State, and do a match of signatures on envelopes,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a ‘goldmine’ of fraud, and we will easily WIN the state.”

Trump added: “Also, quickly check the number of envelopes versus the number of ballots. You may just find that there are many more ballots than there are envelopes. So simple, and so easy to do. Georgia Republicans are angry, all Republicans are angry. Get it done!”

It is impossible to match ballots to envelopes, as Trump demands. Ballots are secret and are not signed.

Moreover, signatures are verified on the envelopes ballots come in before the ballots are counted.

And Trump has no evidence that there were more ballots than envelopes; it is yet another baseless conspiracy theory not rooted in any fact.

Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been a favorite Trump target since the election.

The Republican who runs Georgia’s elections has maintained that the state’s voting systems were secure and that Trump lost fair and square.

That has angered Trump, who held a news conference on Thanksgiving Day during which he called Raffensperger the “enemy of the people.”

‘Massive dumps’

In a phone call with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Trump blamed the way votes were counted and reported.

“This election was over and then they did dumps, they call them dumps, big massive dumps in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and all over,” Trump said. “If you take a look at — you just take a look at just about every state that we’re talking about, every swing state that we’re talking about — and they did these massive dumps of votes and all of a sudden, I went from winning by a lot to losing by a little, and in some cases, it took a period of time to do it.”

The order in which votes are counted and reported is not specified. Votes are simply tabulated, and Biden had more of them.

Trump has tried to turn even vote counting into a conspiracy theory to explain away his defeat.

Department of Justice and FBI

In the same conversation with Bartiromo, he accused his own federal agencies of conspiring against him in the election.

“The FBI and Department of Justice — I don’t know, maybe they are involved,” Trump said. “But how people are allowed to get away from this stuff — with this stuff is unbelievable. This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud. And it continues to be, as they hide. And the problem we have, we go to judges, and people don’t want to get involved.”

There is no evidence that any federal agency conspired against Trump. He simply lost.

Dominion Voting Systems

One of Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories about why he lost is that the voting machines stole votes intended for him.

“Dominion is running our Election. Rigged!” Trump tweeted on Nov. 16.

Voting machines running software produced by Dominion Voting Systems did not delete Trump votes.

In fact, Trump won 12 of the 14 counties in Pennsylvania that used the software, according to a report form the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mail-in voting

Trump has long fought against making it easier to vote, admitting earlier this year that he believed easier access to voting would lead to his defeat.

And after he lost the 2020 election, in which the use of absentee ballots skyrocketed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump turned to blaming the voting method for his loss.

On Nov. 7, the day he was declared the loser, Trump sent an angry tweet: “THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM!”

Voting by mail is repeatedly demonstrated not to be rife with fraud.

Signatures are checked on mail-in ballots, which are nearly impossible for foreign governments to counterfeit, another of Trump’s baseless allegations.

Democrats in big cities

Trump has claimed Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit — large cities in critical Rust Belt swing states that vote overwhelmingly Democratic — were rife with fraud.

“Biden did poorly in big cities (Politico), except those of Detroit (more votes than people!), Philadelphia, Atlanta and Milwaukee, which he had to win. Not surprisingly, they are all located in the most important swing states, and are long known for being politically corrupt!” Trump tweeted on Friday.

There were not more votes than people in Detroit.

And Trump actually did better in those cities in 2020 than he did in 2016. It was actually their suburbs that helped hand Trump his loss.

‘Suppression polls’

Trump blamed preelection polls for his loss, claiming they suppressed votes.

During a news conference on Nov. 5, two days after the election, Trump said: “As everyone now recognizes, media polling was election interference, in the truest sense of that word, by powerful special interests. These really phony polls — I have to call them phony polls, fake polls — were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden, and diminish Republicans’ ability to raise funds. They were what’s called ‘suppression polls.’ Everyone knows that now.”

The 2020 election saw record turnout, with Trump getting more raw votes than he did in 2016.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.