As part of the program Regional Initiative for combating disinformation “Western Balkans Combatting disinformation Center: Exposing malicious influences through fact-checking and Analytical Journalism“, we present you a new analysis of fake news and disinformation narratives.
Trump was right? How Biden stole the 2020 election (GRAPHICS)
https://lat.rt.rs/svet/116842-donald-tramp-bajden-izborna-kradja-2020/
The U.S. presidential elections have been one of the most significant topics of 2024. From the very beginning of the campaign, this event became the subject of widespread disinformation, both from politicians and candidates as well as the media. Donald Trump achieved a significant victory in this year’s election with 312 electoral votes, winning in all swing states, most of which had been Democratic in 2020. On the other hand, his opponent, current Vice President Kamala Harris, underperformed, especially when her total vote count is compared to Biden’s result in 2020. This poor result by Kamala Harris has been used as “proof” of the long-debunked claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen in favor of the Democrats and their candidate, Joe Biden.
The main promoters of the claim that the 2020 election was stolen were President Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Their insistence that Biden was not the legitimately elected president culminated in the attack on the Capitol by Republican supporters, aimed at preventing the formal certification of the election results.
The Capitol attack and false claims of election fraud remain highly sensitive topics in the politically polarized U.S. society. This division was particularly evident during the 2024 campaign, as many Republican politicians refused to accept the 2020 loss. Foreign states often exploit this claim in an attempt to deepen this societal divide and weaken the United States. Russia’s external interference in the U.S. electoral processes has already been widely observed.
Russian state media, including Russia Today (RT), published an article titled “Trump was right? How Biden stole the 2020 election (GRAPHICS).” The article openly supports the idea that Biden received an unrealistically high number of votes in 2020. It states that “more Americans voted in the pandemic year than in any other presidential election in the last 120 years,” which is not evidence of fraudulent votes, as the U.S. simply has a larger population and more voters.
The article attempts to cast doubt on Biden’s victory by suggesting that a “seventy-seven-year-old candidate for U.S. president, prone to gaffes and ‘losing’ his way, managed to present himself to voters as the most charismatic.” This argument completely ignores the fact that, during that period, the U.S. was facing an economic crisis, a pandemic, and social unrest, while President Trump was significantly unpopular.
The claim that the lower vote count for Kamala Harris is “proof” that Biden’s votes were fraudulent lacks any actual evidence. The article states that Kamala received 69 million votes, about 11 million fewer than Biden. However, this number has since changed, as the vote counting was still underway at the time of writing, and now stands at 73 million. In any case, this result does not indicate fraud. Voter turnout in 2020 was higher due to the pandemic and special measures like early voting and mail-in voting. From one election to the next, millions of voters are undecided, and a result where one party loses 8 million voters while another gains 2 million, along with lower overall turnout, does not prove that Biden’s votes were “phantom votes.” The same goes for the claim that Democrats stole the election in swing states in 2020, while losing in 2024. This is not the result of fraud but rather the normal process in U.S. elections.
Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is quoted in the article with statements like “those mail-in votes could have been sent by Martians, Canadians, dead people, or one person could have sent 100,000 votes” and “maybe Biden voted 5,000 times for himself.” The article concludes by asserting that Trump’s victory was so convincing that the election couldn’t have been stolen, which is an unfounded claim with no concrete evidence. Trump and his legal team, led by Giuliani, filed over 60 lawsuits related to the election, but no evidence of fraud was presented, and judges dismissed all the lawsuits.
Author: Aleksandar Jakovljević
