Trump calls Georgia recount 'a joke' in latest Twitter meltdown

Trump railed against election rulings in Georgia and Pennsylvania in his tweets

Donald Trump called the Georgia recount “a joke” Wednesday morning on Twitter.

"The Georgia recount is a joke and is being done UNDER PROTEST. Even though thousands of fraudulent votes have been found, the real number is in matching signatures. Governor must open up the unconstitutional Consent Decree and call in the Legislature!" Mr Trump wrote. 

Georgia did find more than 2,800 uncounted ballots, but elections officials said the result of counting those ballots did not flip the state’s results for Mr Trump. 

One trove of found ballots - stored memory card located during an audit of voting machines - contained 2,755 votes. The card contained 1,577 votes for Mr Trump and 1,128 votes for Joe Biden. Though the find earned Mr Trump an additional 449 votes, it was not enough to cover Mr Biden’s nearly 14,000 vote lead. 

The complaint was part of a string of tweets Mr Trump wrote Wednesday morning, many of which included misinformation or outright lies.

It is unclear whether Mr Trump is referring to Georgia or Pennsylvania in the tweet, but in either instance his claim is a lie. Both Republicans and Democrats are allowed to have an equal number of observers watching the recount. 

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled 5-2 against Mr Trump’s lawsuit suing over poll observer access on Tuesday. 

“Critically, we find the Board’s regulations as applied herein were reasonable in that they allowed candidate representatives to observe the Board conducting its activities as prescribed under the Election Code,” the state’s Supreme Court wrote in its conclusion. 

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state’s Election Code does not specify a minimum distance for observers. 

Mr Trump responded by calling the ruling a “terrible insult to our Constitution.” 

In another tweet, Mr Trump said “this was a rigged election” and alleged that voting machine glitches were evidence of cheating. He also claimed that voters cast ballots after the elections. 

The president is likely referring to a debunked conspiracy theory put forward by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Michigan GOP officials that claimed a glitch in voting software caused votes for Mr Trump to be allocated to Mr Biden. 

The Michigan Department of State issued a statement claiming while there was a glitch in one county, it was the result of human error, and no votes were allocated incorrectly as a result of the mistake. 

Michigan has been a thorn in Mr Trump’s side for the past 24 hours; on Tuesday night, Mr Trump tweeted his support for a pair of Wayne County Republican canvassers who refused to certify the county’s election results for Mr Trump. By the time Mr Trump made his tweet, however, the Wayne County canvassers had reversed course after facing public backlash and certified the election. 

Wayne County is the state’s most populous county and is the home of Detroit. Without Wayne County’s heavily Democratic voters, Mr Trump would have won Michigan. 

After the canvassers agreed to certify the election, Mr Trump was predictably furious. 

Mr Trump’s claim that there were “far more votes than people” is rooted in a debunked piece of Facebook misinformation. It’s a lie. 

His allegations that the Republican canvassers were harassed is hyperbole. When the canvassers refused to certify the results along what were clearly partisan lines, voters who were at risk of having their ballots discarded simply for residing in Wayne County were predictably upset and lined up to let the canvassers know what they thought. 

Another Wayne County canvasser, Ned Staebler, went viral after ripping into his Republican colleagues on a Zoom session and telling them that history would remember them as racists. 

Detroit’s population is 80 per cent Black. On Tuesday night, Mr Trump tweeted that “Detroit, not surprisingly, has tremendous problems” before demanding that Michigan be flipped back in favour of the Republicans. 

In the tweets where Mr Trump was not irresponsibly signal boosting debunked conspiracy theories, he was making impotent claims that he had won the election. 

“The Great State of Michigan, with votes being far greater than the number of people who voted, cannot certify the election. The Democrats cheated big time, and got caught. A Republican WIN!” he wrote. 

Michigan did certify the election.