Trump's disinformation push underway to subvert polls as he stares at loss

A disinformation push to subvert the election is well underway, and it is coming straight from President Donald Trump and his allies. The goal: To somehow stop a victory by former Vice President Joseph R Biden, or, failing that, undermine his legitimacy before he can take office.

Trump’s false declaration of victory in the small hours of Wednesday morning quickly united hyperpartisan conservative activists and the standard-bearers of the right-wing media, such as Breitbart, with internet trolls and QAnon supporters behind a singular viral message: #StopTheSteal.

But its impact has become apparent far beyond the internet, with the theme dominating conservative talk radio and the prime-time lineup on Fox News. Trump-aligned hosts pressed the notion the vote counting in the still-undecided states was illegitimate — the sort of message that was drawing flags on Twitter and Facebook but flourishing elsewhere.  “How big of a mistake is it for the Democrats to have kind of a burn-it-all-down approach,” Laura Ingraham asked on her programme Wednesday night, “to destroy the integrity of our election process with this mail-in, day-of-registration efforts, counting after the election’s over — dumping batches of votes a day, two days, maybe even three days after the election?”

The messaging was far blunter from the president himself, who used a Thursday evening briefing at the White House to reel off a series of baseless attacks on an election system he described as “rigged” by Democrats trying to “steal an election.” It was the continuation of a diatribe he had started earlier in the day with a tweet reading “STOP THE FRAUD!” that Twitter quickly flagged as containing information that “might be misleading.”

Trump and his campaign aides had long indicated that they would challenge any unwelcome result with charges that the election was being stolen through “voter fraud,” which is in fact exceedingly rare.

On Thursday, senior aides to  Biden portrayed the disinformation push as part of a desperate, coordinated campaign that, in tandem with the president’s legal strategy to press lawsuits against election officials across the country, was intended to halt a count that seemed likely to end Trump’s presidency.

“This is part of a broader misinformation campaign that involves some political theater,” Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden, told reporters. “All of this is intended to create a large cloud that it is the hope of the Trump campaign that nobody can see through. But it is not a very thick cloud, it’s not hard to see what they’re doing — we see through it; so will the courts, and so will election officials.”

If there was little indication that the disinformation push was helping the Trump campaign in court, where it was seeking to use small instances of worker error or technical fouls to challenge Democratic ballots, it nonetheless seemed likely to do one thing: persuade a large swath of American voters that any Biden presidency was being stolen through illegal and unconstitutional means.

“This country is too corrupt, I’m so angry,” said Min Liu, who drove down from New York City to join protests in Philadelphia supporting Trump. “The Democrats are cheating right now.”

She was not alone. On Wednesday and well into Thursday, the media campaign was spilling into the real world with similar protests in Detroit, Phoenix and elsewhere. Some were led by notorious alt-right trolls, like Mike Cernovich, who rose to national prominence in 2016 pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, a precursor to the QAnon movement that falsely claimed that powerful Democrats were running a child-trafficking ring out of the basement of a Washington pizza restaurant that, in reality, has no basement.

Now, Cernovich is pushing a message of widespread election fraud in lock step with the president, his children and well-established members of his inner circle, like his personal lawyer, Rudolph W Giuliani. Taken together, the media activity and the protests were emerging as a national and online version of the “Brooks Brothers riot” in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, when preppy Republican operatives, claiming fraud, stormed the Miami-Dade County canvassing board in Florida and effectively halted recount efforts that were expected to benefit the Democratic candidate, Al Gore.

Day Four of Counting

Thousands of mail-in ballots may have gone missing: USPS 

The US Postal Service told a judge that a review of processing data revealed roughly 4,250 mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina may have gone missing. It’s possible the ballots were delivered, but that workers skipped a final envelope-scan procedure to speed delivery under a court-ordered rush, the USPS told US District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington.

US Postal Service: 1,700 ballots found in Pennsylvania facilities

The US Postal Service (USPS) said about 1,700 ballots had been identified in Pennsylvania at processing facilities during two sweeps on Thursday and were being delivered to election officials. In a court filing early Friday, USPS said 1,076 ballots, had been found at the USPS Philadelphia Processing and Distribution Center. About 300 were found at the Pittsburgh processing center, 266 at a Lehigh Valley facility and others found at other Pennsylvania processing centers.

Lie after lie after lie: TV networks break from live Trump address

Several US TV networks late Thursday halted live coverage of Donald Trump's first public appearance since election night after concluding that the president was spreading disinformation. Trump unleashed a flood of incendiary and unsubstantiated claims in a 17-minute address, insisting that Democrats were using "illegal votes" to "steal the election from us."

Thunberg hits back at Trump over anger management taunt

Greta Thunberg

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg hit back at Donald Trump on Twitter late on Thursday saying the US president should “chill” about the election, a riposte to his tweet last year mocking the teenager over what he called her anger management issues. Commenting on Trump tweeting "STOP THE COUNT!" on Thursday, as the election race in the United States went to the wire, 17-year-old Thunberg tweeted: "So ridiculous. Donald must work on his Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Donald, Chill!"

YouTube channels making money from ads, memberships amplify Trump voting fraud claims

At least nine popular YouTube channels were promoting on Thursday debunked accusations about voting fraud in the US presidential race, conspiratorial content that could jeopardise advertising and memberships revenue they get from the video service. Reuters found the channels, ranging from ones with 1,000 followers to more than 629,000, endorsing claims that fact-checking units of the Associated Press, Reuters and other organisations have deemed false or inaccurate.

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