Republicans Celebrate the Media Calling Alaska for Donald Trump While Also Still Saying the Media Can’t Call Elections

For the last week, Donald Trump and his allies and supporters have been saying the 2020 presidential election was overrun with fraud. They claim that their unofficial, illegitimate “observers” were denied entry to polling places, that random batches of fake ballots kept being “found” (meaning “counted”), and plenty more false accusations. Joe Biden has passed the threshold of electoral votes needed to be declared the winner and he’s lapped Trump by more than 5 million popular votes. So the only thing the Trump campaign can think to do is declare the entire election illegitimate.

Well, not the entire election, actually. Because even though the GOP is declaring the ballots illegitimate based on the outcome in the presidential race, they’re also celebrating the results when it works in their favor, even though those results would have come from the exact same ballots they’re simultaneously decrying.

Senate Majority (for now) Leader Mitch McConnell has not only accepted his reelection in Kentucky but has celebrated other down-ballot wins by Republicans, as have other GOP lawmakers, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge Biden’s win. McConnell and others have been repeating their new party soundbite that “the media doesn’t decide elections.” Which, of course, is true. But the press isn’t deciding these races, they’re just reporting the results.

For example, the AP was just reporting results earlier today when it declared Trump won the state of Alaska. Weirdly, not only did Republicans not say anything about not letting the media call elections, but Ivanka Trump proudly retweeted the news.

How strange because if you click on that #APracecall hashtag that Ivanka clearly trusts well enough to retweet, this is the next post:

She’s not the only one to celebrate this win, either.

So I guess Democracy is under threat and ballots are “illegal” unless they voted for Republicans and then everything’s fine and also the ballots that vote for some Republicans but not Trump must be the victim of partial tampering and we should correct the fake parts of those ballots but leave the rest as is. Got it! Great messaging!

(image: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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