What to really expect from Donald Trump on election night
Donald Trump will try to declare victory on election night, based on partial results in states that haven’t been called for anyone. We know this, because his campaign surrogates are now flat out saying as much in public. But this is a weak strategy, and not one that’s likely to work.
First, the media isn’t likely to allow Trump to get away with this. None of the major TV networks will call a state for Trump on election night just because he’s artificially ahead based on partial counting of in-person voting. Even Fox News won’t go there, because it doesn’t want egg on its face after those states eventually end up going the other way.
For that matter Twitter and Facebook have also stated their intent to block Donald Trump (or anyone else involved) from falsely declaring a winner on election night if nothing has been determined yet. While we don’t have huge faith in the people running these platforms, they’ve already declared which way they’re going to lean on this, meaning they would have a difficult time going back on it.
Donald Trump can’t get anywhere by going into court and arguing that he’s magically the winner of certain states based on partial results, if the major media outlets and platforms are confirming that, no, he hasn’t won those states. Our job this week will be to pressure the media to get it right.
