Twitter Continues To Flag Trump Posts Claiming Election Victory
WASHINGTON (AP/CBS SF) -- As President Donald Trump continued to make false claims on Twitter insisting that he won the election, the San Francisco-based social media site has maintained its policy of flagging his posts.
The posts came as Trump backtracked from an apparent acknowledgment on Sunday that Joe Biden won the White House.
Trump, without using Biden's name, said that "He won" as part of a tweet that made baseless claims about a "rigged" election. But as the Republican president saw how his comments were being interpreted as his first public acknowledgment of a Biden victory, he quickly reversed course.
That tweet and several subsequent claims were quickly flagged by Twitter, which said, "Official sources called this election differently."
The site has also flagged the president's repeated claims of fraud during the election.
There was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, election officials from both political parties stated publicly that the election went well, and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities. Trump's campaign has tried to mount legal challenges across the country, but many of the lawsuits have been thrown out and none has included any evidence that the outcome might be reversed.
Biden, a Democrat, defeated Trump by winning back a trio of battleground states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and topped the 270 electoral vote threshold to clinch the presidency. Biden so far has 78.8 million votes, the most ever by a winning candidate, to Trump's 73.1 million.
"If the president's prepared to begin to recognize that reality, that's positive," Biden's incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, told NBC's "Meet the Press." Still, Klain said, "Donald Trump's Twitter feed doesn't make Joe Biden president or not president. The American people did that."
A Republican governor, Arkansas' Asa Hutchinson, said "it was good, actually" to see Trump's tweet that Biden won. "I think that's the start of an acknowledgment. ... We want to make sure that there is a smooth transition," Hutchinson said on NBC.
Nearly two weeks after Election Day, Trump has neither called Biden nor made a formal concession, and White House officials have insisted that they are preparing for a second term.
Former President Obama, in an interview that aired Sunday on "60 Minutes," said he would remind Mr. Trump that, as president, he is a public servant and a temporary occupant of the office.
"And when your time is up then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego, and your own interests, and your own disappointments," Obama said. "My advice to President Trump is, if you want at this late stage in the game to be remembered as somebody who put country first, it's time for you to do the same thing."
Obama also criticized those Republicans going along with Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud.
"I'm more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally. And that's a dangerous path," he said.
In recent days, Trump appeared to be inching closer to acknowledging the reality of his loss. In comments Friday in the Rose Garden about a coronavirus vaccine, Trump said his administration would "not be going to a lockdown" to slow the spread of COVID-19, and added that "whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell."
Trump on Sunday renewed his groundless attacks on an election technology firm, Dominion Voting Systems, without evidence of any serious irregularities. Dominion has said it "denies claims about any vote switching or alleged software issues with our voting systems."
The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency that oversees U.S. election security, said in a statement last week that the "November 3rd election was the most secure in American history." The agency said, "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser, said it was important for Republican Party leaders to explain to voters that Trump did lose and that his claims of election fraud are baseless. Bolton left the administration last year. He says he resigned; Trump says he fired Bolton.
"I think as every day goes by, it's clearer and clearer there isn't any evidence. But if the Republican voters are only hearing Donald Trump's misrepresentations, it's not surprising that they believe it," Bolton said on ABC's "This Week." "It's critical for other Republican leaders to stand up and explain what actually happened. Donald Trump lost what by any evidence we have so far was a free and fair election."
President Trump also lashed out at Bolton on Twitter Sunday.
© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
