Trump uses error in NYC mayor race to fuel his attacks on American democracy
Former president Donald Trump is still insistent on pushing his disturbing, destabilizing conspiracies about what happened in the 2020 election some seven months later, and he’ll latch on to anything and everything he thinks could support his case, no matter how unrelated or ridiculous it might be.
His latest outburst shows just how desperately he’s grasping at straws. On Wednesday morning, Trump released a statement complaining that an error by the New York City Board of Elections, which is currently counting votes for its first-ever ranked vote mayoral election, was evidence that the entire thing was marred by “vast irregularities and mistakes” and that now after the votes were counted, early leader Eric Adams might not win.
Trump is obsessed with this idea that the early leader is somehow anointed the winner and that anything else is evidence of “vast irregularities and mistakes,” drawing a completely unrelated parallel between the NYC mayoral election and the 2020 presidential election and attempting to use New York’s struggles with a brand-new voting system to prove that the 2020 election was a Scam and a Hoax.
“Just like in the 2020 Presidential Election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made and that Eric Adams, despite an almost insurmountable lead, may not win the race. The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won. The Presidential Race was a Scam and a Hoax with numbers and results being found that are massive, shocking, and determinative. Watch the mess you are about to see in New York City, it will go on forever. They should close the books and do it all over again, the old-fashioned way, when we had results that were accurate and meaningful.”
Trump is likely also displeased that Adams, a virulently pro-cop conservative, has seen his early lead shrink and is (as of writing) neck-and-neck with a more liberal challenger, Kathryn Garcia.
The allegations made by Trump are nonsense, but it just goes to show how he will stop at nothing to delegitimize every single election in America whose results he doesn’t like — and we need to be preparing for a future where the majority of Republicans in the country agrees with his conspiracies, no matter how divorced from reality they might be.
