The Facts on Trump’s Fraud Letter
His 2020 monomania is news, and it reflects on his fitness for 2024.
By The WSJ Editorial Board
Updated Oct. 28, 2021 6:15 pm ET
The progressive parsons of the press are aflutter that we published a letter to the editor Thursday from former President Trump, objecting to our editorial pointing out that he lost Pennsylvania last year by 80,555 votes. We trust our readers to make up their own minds about his statement. And we think it’s news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas.
Mr. Trump’s letter is his familiar barrage, with 20 bullet points about alleged irregularities that he says prove “the election was rigged.” It’s difficult to respond to everything, and the asymmetry is part of the former President’s strategy. He tosses off enough unsourced numbers in 30 seconds to keep a fact-checker busy for 30 days. When one claim is refuted, Mr. Trump is back with two more.
To highlight a few, he objects to the way the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rewrote the deadline for mail ballots. We do too. But he insinuates that the presidential results include thousands of tardy votes, and “none of these should have been counted.” They weren’t, per a directive by Justice Samuel Alito. “Those ballots were segregated as the court ordered,” says a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State. “They are not included in the vote totals.”
Mr. Trump says that “25,000 ballots were requested from nursing homes at the exact same time.” His citation for this—no kidding—is a Nov. 9 cable-TV hit by Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mr. Trump is alleging 25,000 fake votes in Pennsylvania, based on a stray remark by someone from South Carolina. Breaking news: A politician on TV repeated a rumor. We emailed to follow up, and Mr. Graham’s office tells us this was “an allegation, one of many others,” but it now “can be laid to rest.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s figures appear to come from amateur spelunking into voter data. Caveat emptor when this is done by motivated partisans unfamiliar with election systems. The “audit” team in Arizona asserted that Maricopa County received 74,000 more mail votes than were sent out. This was debunked as a misunderstanding of the files.
Mr. Trump says Attorney General Bill Barr “ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate” the election. Mr. McSwain claims as much. Yet Mr. Barr, who’s no liberal patsy, has said it’s “false,” and Mr. McSwain is running for Governor. Mr. Barr said Mr. McSwain “told me that he had to do this because he was under pressure from Trump.” We believe Mr. Barr.
This is how it goes for election truthers. First the allegation was ballots marked with Sharpies, then voting machines tied to Venezuela, then more votes than voters. Now Mr. Trump apparently thinks his own Attorney General did an inside job. Electoral fraud does happen: A Pennsylvania man received five years of probation this spring after voting for Mr. Trump on behalf of his dead mother. The price of liberty, as they say, is vigilance. But the evidence doesn’t show anything real that could dent Pennsylvania’s 80,555-vote margin.
Even if it did, Mr. Trump would be two states short of victory. Georgia’s ballots were counted three times and a signature check done. The Arizona audit was a dud. A Michigan inquiry led by a GOP lawmaker ended up keelhauling “willful ignorance” and grifters who use misinformation “to raise money or publicity.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers who made baseless claims have been sued for defamation—twice. They’ve been sanctioned by a federal judge. Does Mr. Trump imagine a conspiracy so deep that practically everybody is in on it?
Mr. Trump is making these claims elsewhere, so we hardly did him a special favor by letting him respond to our editorial. We offer the same courtesy to others we criticize, even when they make allegations we think are false.
As for the media clerics, their attempts to censor Mr. Trump have done nothing to diminish his popularity. Our advice would be to examine their own standards after they fell so easily for false Russian collusion claims. They’d have more credibility in refuting Mr. Trump’s.
Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
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Re: Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
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Re: Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
Maybe they were paid well.
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Re: Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
Another "review"...
The Wall Street Journal's Opinion section published a lengthy letter to the editor from Donald Trump on Wednesday that was full of the former US president's debunked claims and conspiratorial falsehoods about the election he lost last year.
The Journal's opinion operation is separate from the newsroom and sometimes downright oppositional. But both are part of Rupert Murdoch's cherished newspaper, which is a key part of the News Corp portfolio.
Several Journal reporters grumbled about the letter after it came out on Wednesday, but none were surprised it was published, given the Opinion section's right-wing and contrarian bent.
"I think it's very disappointing that our opinion section continues to publish misinformation that our news side works so hard to debunk," one of the reporters said. "They should hold themselves to the same standards we do!"
Similar disputes over differing standards have broken out in the past between the news and opinion camps.
On Wednesday, some Journal newsroom staffers hinted at their dissatisfaction through retweets that were critical of the Trump letter. At least one reporter retweeted The Daily Beast's Matt Fuller, who wrote, "Newspapers don't exist so that powerful people can publish whatever lies they want. In fact, that may be one of the very opposite reasons newspapers exist."
So what was the justification for publishing the letter to the editor? No comment, thus far. Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post inquired, but "Steve Severinghaus, a spokesman for the Journal, declined to comment about the decision to publish the letter. When asked specifically about the newspaper's standards for publishing a letter, he did not respond."
The Wall Street Journal's Opinion section published a lengthy letter to the editor from Donald Trump on Wednesday that was full of the former US president's debunked claims and conspiratorial falsehoods about the election he lost last year.
The Journal's opinion operation is separate from the newsroom and sometimes downright oppositional. But both are part of Rupert Murdoch's cherished newspaper, which is a key part of the News Corp portfolio.
Several Journal reporters grumbled about the letter after it came out on Wednesday, but none were surprised it was published, given the Opinion section's right-wing and contrarian bent.
"I think it's very disappointing that our opinion section continues to publish misinformation that our news side works so hard to debunk," one of the reporters said. "They should hold themselves to the same standards we do!"
Similar disputes over differing standards have broken out in the past between the news and opinion camps.
On Wednesday, some Journal newsroom staffers hinted at their dissatisfaction through retweets that were critical of the Trump letter. At least one reporter retweeted The Daily Beast's Matt Fuller, who wrote, "Newspapers don't exist so that powerful people can publish whatever lies they want. In fact, that may be one of the very opposite reasons newspapers exist."
So what was the justification for publishing the letter to the editor? No comment, thus far. Jeremy Barr of the Washington Post inquired, but "Steve Severinghaus, a spokesman for the Journal, declined to comment about the decision to publish the letter. When asked specifically about the newspaper's standards for publishing a letter, he did not respond."
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Re: Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
Huffington Post comments/article...
The Wall Street Journal faced backlash Wednesday for publishing a letter to the editor from former President Donald Trump filled with demonstrably false claims about the 2020 election.
Responding to a Sunday Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court,” the former president wrote, “Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out.”
He then provided a bulleted list of “examples” of voter fraud in Pennsylvania to support his claims, relying repeatedly on data from Audit the Vote PA, an organization that has no real experience in assessing elections and has promoted unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
Multiple audits into the state’s 2020 election results affirmed the vote count, and numerous lawsuits challenging the results failed in court. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state’s election.
The Wall Street Journal published Trump’s letter without noting these facts. The former president was deplatformed from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites earlier this year after spreading disinformation about the election for months and inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol to try and overturn the results.
Since then, Trump has resorted to campaign-style rallies and tweet-like statements released through his spokesperson to spread his lies.
Media critics, journalists and political commentators slammed the Journal Wednesday for giving Trump another platform for disinformation and for passing off his false claims as “opinion.”
“Trump couldn’t post this on Facebook but the editors at the WSJ collectively decided to put it on their platform. Think about that. And they think they can distance themselves from it by doing it as an LTE. As of that magically absolves them from pushing the lies,” tweeted Amanda Carpenter, political columnist for The Bulwark.
Jordan Fischer, an investigative reporter for Washington, D.C., channel WUSA9, called it a “new low” for the Journal’s opinion section.
“Today they printed a litany of election falsehoods from former President Trump – without even a single mention of the fact that their own editorial side has thoroughly debunked these claims,” he tweeted.
Washington Post national correspondent Philip Bump made 14 observations about the letter’s veracity and observed that “the Journal would have been better served had it explained why it chose to run the letter without contextualizing it, since that might have at least offered some clarity on the otherwise inexplicable decision.” He noted that the paper had so far declined to comment on its rationale.
The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Wall Street Journal faced backlash Wednesday for publishing a letter to the editor from former President Donald Trump filled with demonstrably false claims about the 2020 election.
Responding to a Sunday Wall Street Journal editorial titled “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court,” the former president wrote, “Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out.”
He then provided a bulleted list of “examples” of voter fraud in Pennsylvania to support his claims, relying repeatedly on data from Audit the Vote PA, an organization that has no real experience in assessing elections and has promoted unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
Multiple audits into the state’s 2020 election results affirmed the vote count, and numerous lawsuits challenging the results failed in court. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in Pennsylvania or any other state’s election.
The Wall Street Journal published Trump’s letter without noting these facts. The former president was deplatformed from Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites earlier this year after spreading disinformation about the election for months and inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol to try and overturn the results.
Since then, Trump has resorted to campaign-style rallies and tweet-like statements released through his spokesperson to spread his lies.
Media critics, journalists and political commentators slammed the Journal Wednesday for giving Trump another platform for disinformation and for passing off his false claims as “opinion.”
“Trump couldn’t post this on Facebook but the editors at the WSJ collectively decided to put it on their platform. Think about that. And they think they can distance themselves from it by doing it as an LTE. As of that magically absolves them from pushing the lies,” tweeted Amanda Carpenter, political columnist for The Bulwark.
Jordan Fischer, an investigative reporter for Washington, D.C., channel WUSA9, called it a “new low” for the Journal’s opinion section.
“Today they printed a litany of election falsehoods from former President Trump – without even a single mention of the fact that their own editorial side has thoroughly debunked these claims,” he tweeted.
Washington Post national correspondent Philip Bump made 14 observations about the letter’s veracity and observed that “the Journal would have been better served had it explained why it chose to run the letter without contextualizing it, since that might have at least offered some clarity on the otherwise inexplicable decision.” He noted that the paper had so far declined to comment on its rationale.
The Wall Street Journal did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
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Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
Jeesh... What a bunch of lies and falsehoods...
President Trump Responds on Pennsylvania’s 2020 Election
Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
Oct. 27, 2021 2:15 pm ET
In your editorial “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court” (Oct. 25), you state the fact that a court wrongly said mail-in ballots could be counted after Election Day. “This didn’t matter,” you add, “because Mr. Biden won the state by 80,555, but the country is lucky the election wasn’t closer. If the election had hung on a few thousand Pennsylvanians, the next President might have been picked by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out. Here are just a few examples of how determinative the voter fraud in Pennsylvania was:
• 71,893 mail-in ballots were returned after Nov. 3, 2020, at 8 p.m., according to Audit the Vote PA. None of these should have been counted according to the U.S. Constitution and the state Legislature, which didn’t approve this change.
• 10,515 mail-in votes from people who do not exist on the Pennsylvania voter rolls at all.
• 120,000 excess voters are not yet accounted for by the Pennsylvania Department of State—far more votes than voters!
• From 2016 to 2020, during my term as president, Republicans out-registered Democrats 21 to 1. This translated to a 659,145-vote lead at 12:38 a.m. on election night, with “Trump” up a full 15 points.
• Hundreds of thousands of votes were unlawfully counted in secret, in defiance of a court order, while Republican poll watchers were thrown out of buildings where voting took place.
• 39,771 people who registered to vote after the Oct. 19, 2020, deadline, still voted in the 2020 election—simply not allowed.
Highly respected Audit the Vote PA found numerous data integrity problems the Pennsylvania Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system, including:
• 305,874 voters were removed from the rolls after the election on Nov. 3rd.
• 51,792 voters with inactive voter registrations at the end of October 2020 nevertheless voted.
• 57,000 duplicate registrations.
• 55,823 voters who were backfilled into the SURE system.
• 58,261 first-time voters 70 years and older.
• 39,911 people who were added to voter rolls while under 17 years of age.
• 17,000 mail-in ballots sent to addresses outside of Pennsylvania.
• Another analysis of Montgomery County, Pa., found 98% of the eligible voting population in the county was already registered to vote—not possible.
• A canvass of Montgomery County has identified 78,000 phantom voters, with roughly 30% of respondents unaware that there are people registered and voting from their address.
• One nursing home in Lancaster County had 690 registrations and an extremely high turnout rate of 85% in 2020, while nursing homes were closed due to Covid. One of these residents said she had not voted in the past 3 years, but had a mail-in ballot cast in her name.
• 25,000 ballots were requested from nursing homes at the exact same time.
• Numerous reports and sworn affidavits attested to poll watcher intimidation and harassment, many by brute force.
• Attorney General Bill Barr ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate election irregularities.
• Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook poured over $17 million to interfere in the Pennsylvania election, including $5.5 million on “ballot processing equipment” in Philadelphia and $552,000 for drop boxes where the voting pattern was not possible.
And so much more! This is why Democrats and the Fake News Media do not want a full forensic audit in Pennsylvania. In reality, 80,555 ballots are nothing when there is this much corruption or voter irregularities.
Donald J. Trump
Palm Beach, Fla.
President Trump Responds on Pennsylvania’s 2020 Election
Donald Trump writes a letter to the editor. Wall Street Journal
Oct. 27, 2021 2:15 pm ET
In your editorial “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court” (Oct. 25), you state the fact that a court wrongly said mail-in ballots could be counted after Election Day. “This didn’t matter,” you add, “because Mr. Biden won the state by 80,555, but the country is lucky the election wasn’t closer. If the election had hung on a few thousand Pennsylvanians, the next President might have been picked by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out. Here are just a few examples of how determinative the voter fraud in Pennsylvania was:
• 71,893 mail-in ballots were returned after Nov. 3, 2020, at 8 p.m., according to Audit the Vote PA. None of these should have been counted according to the U.S. Constitution and the state Legislature, which didn’t approve this change.
• 10,515 mail-in votes from people who do not exist on the Pennsylvania voter rolls at all.
• 120,000 excess voters are not yet accounted for by the Pennsylvania Department of State—far more votes than voters!
• From 2016 to 2020, during my term as president, Republicans out-registered Democrats 21 to 1. This translated to a 659,145-vote lead at 12:38 a.m. on election night, with “Trump” up a full 15 points.
• Hundreds of thousands of votes were unlawfully counted in secret, in defiance of a court order, while Republican poll watchers were thrown out of buildings where voting took place.
• 39,771 people who registered to vote after the Oct. 19, 2020, deadline, still voted in the 2020 election—simply not allowed.
Highly respected Audit the Vote PA found numerous data integrity problems the Pennsylvania Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system, including:
• 305,874 voters were removed from the rolls after the election on Nov. 3rd.
• 51,792 voters with inactive voter registrations at the end of October 2020 nevertheless voted.
• 57,000 duplicate registrations.
• 55,823 voters who were backfilled into the SURE system.
• 58,261 first-time voters 70 years and older.
• 39,911 people who were added to voter rolls while under 17 years of age.
• 17,000 mail-in ballots sent to addresses outside of Pennsylvania.
• Another analysis of Montgomery County, Pa., found 98% of the eligible voting population in the county was already registered to vote—not possible.
• A canvass of Montgomery County has identified 78,000 phantom voters, with roughly 30% of respondents unaware that there are people registered and voting from their address.
• One nursing home in Lancaster County had 690 registrations and an extremely high turnout rate of 85% in 2020, while nursing homes were closed due to Covid. One of these residents said she had not voted in the past 3 years, but had a mail-in ballot cast in her name.
• 25,000 ballots were requested from nursing homes at the exact same time.
• Numerous reports and sworn affidavits attested to poll watcher intimidation and harassment, many by brute force.
• Attorney General Bill Barr ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate election irregularities.
• Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook poured over $17 million to interfere in the Pennsylvania election, including $5.5 million on “ballot processing equipment” in Philadelphia and $552,000 for drop boxes where the voting pattern was not possible.
And so much more! This is why Democrats and the Fake News Media do not want a full forensic audit in Pennsylvania. In reality, 80,555 ballots are nothing when there is this much corruption or voter irregularities.
Donald J. Trump
Palm Beach, Fla.
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