Team Trump Is Already Spewing Bonkers Harris Swing State Conspiracies

Right-wing conspiracy theories began circulating Tuesday evening after election officials in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, announced that they would need to recount approximately 31,000 ballots.

Several hours into counting votes, election officials realized that some of the doors on the tabulation machines “were not fully secured” by senior election officials, according to a statement from the Milwaukee Election Commission.

“In order to eliminate any doubt and be fully transparent, the MEC has decided to start the tabulation process over for all ballots at Central Count,” accounting for approximately 31,000 votes, the statement said.

The recount will significantly delay results out of Wisconsin, which was previously expected to give partial results Tuesday night. In 2020, President Joe Biden won Milwaukee County.

Republican National Committee co-chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump posted about the issue on X Tuesday evening, claiming that her team had been “monitoring slow ballot counting in Milwaukee” and had learned that the “counting took place in unsecured conditions.”

“This is an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration in a key swing state: voters deserve better and we are unambiguously calling on Milwaukee’s officials to DO THEIR JOBS and count ballots quickly and effectively. Anything less undermines voter confidence,” she wrote.

Her post was shared by RNC co-Chair Michael Whatley and Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz. Earlier Tuesday, Lara Trump had stoked concerns over voting in Pennsylvania, another key swing state.

It seems that undermining voter confidence has already taken root. CNN’s report on the issue in Milwaukee was shared by hatemongering X account LibsofTikTok, which regularly promotes misinformation and extremist conspiracy theories, sparking right-wing speculation that something more sinister was afoot.

Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was charged with drumming up Donald Trump’s ground game, seemed disturbed over low voter turnout on Election Day.

“Turnout is mixed and not where we want it to be. We need more people to vote. We can’t let turnout flatline,” Kirk wrote in a post on X Tuesday afternoon. “Text everyone you know. Make more noise. We need more.”

Turning Point USA, Kirk’s conservative youth organization, was tapped by Trump earlier this year to handle his get-out-the-vote efforts alongside Elon Musk’s America PAC. So if voters don’t show up for Trump, it will be at least 50 percent Kirk’s fault.

Kirk’s desperate message came as multiple states reported high voter turnout, including key swing states Trump needs to win if he wants a shot at the White House.

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that his state is on course to surpass five million ballots cast, exceeding its record turnout from 2020. In North Carolina, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper reportedly said that suburban and female voter turnout in his state had been higher than expected.

Hours later, Kirk posted again, now claiming that the tides had changed.

“Huge after work surge happening right now in GA, NC, PA. Wow,” he wrote. “The men are arriving. Turnout is SURGING. STAY IN LINE!”

Donald Trump is already stoking the flames of conspiracy toward Philadelphia, where the Republican presidential nominee is suggesting a “massive” election fraud scandal is taking place.

“A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social early Tuesday evening. “Law Enforcement coming!!!”

Within minutes, Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, rejected Trump’s claim, writing that there was “absolutely no truth to this allegation.”

“It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure,” Bluestein posted on X (formerly Twitter.)

In a separate statement, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner turned Trump’s bold claims back on him, arguing that the only claims of “massive cheating” had been coming from the MAGA leader and his allies.

“There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation,” Krasner continued. “We have invited complaints and allegations of improprieties all day. If Donald J. Trump has any facts to support his wild allegations, we want them now. Right now. We are not holding our breath.”

Krasner had made headlines Monday by warning anyone planning to intimidate voters that they would “F around and find out.”

While it was unclear what specific wrongdoing Trump was alleging within the City of Brotherly Love, other high-profile Republicans had spent much of Election Day elevating sourceless allegations that the key battleground state was facing election integrity issues.

Republican National Committee co-Chair Michael Whatley claimed that Philadelphia County was one of several in Pennsylvania where Republican poll watchers were being “turned away.”

“Early this morning we learned that Republican poll watchers in Philadelphia, York, Westmoreland, Allegheny, Lehigh, Cambria, Wyoming, and Lackawanna Counties were being turned away,” Whatley posted. “We deployed our roving attorneys, engaged with local officials, and can now report that all Republican poll watchers have been let into the building. We will keep fighting, keep winning, and keep sharing updates.”

In response, the other RNC co-Chair and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump said that “stopping this issue dead in its tracks is EXACTLY why we designed this EI operation.”

“Let this serve as a warning to anyone out there today who wants to interfere in a free, fair and transparent election process, WE ARE WATCHING & ready to take action,” she added.

But Bluestein was quick to shoot down Whatley and Lara Trump’s allegations, too. “We have been in regular contact with the RNC. We have been responsive to every report of irregularities at the polls to ensure Philadelphians can vote safely and securely,” he wrote in a separate post.

The Philadelphia Police Department did not know what Trump was referring to and had not been made aware of any election-related issues that required their response, according to CNN’s Holmes Lybrand.

Pennsylvania’s voting results will begin rolling in after polls close at 8:00 p.m. EST, and vote counting may continue through Friday as state officials contend with tens of thousands of provisional ballots amid issues with Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot procedures.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are projected to be neck and neck in Pennsylvania, with the Democratic presidential nominee just a smidge ahead of her Republican opponent at 47.9 percent to Trump’s 47.7 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregated polling.

Last month, Trump jumped the gun on his own conspiracy, issuing a preemptive call to arms for what he described as “rampant Cheating and Skullduggery” by Democrats during the 2024 presidential race.

“CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote in a post that promised to punish his opponents “to the fullest extent of the law,” including “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”

This story has been updated.

A federal judge in Georgia threw out a lawsuit Tuesday from the Republican National Committee, which claimed that several counties had illegally accepted absentee ballots in person over the weekend.

The Southern District of Georgia’s chief judge, Stan R. Baker, said that Republicans’ complaint that ballot drop boxes could not be open past the end of the early voting period lacked a “basic level of statutory review and reading comprehension.”

Baker, a Donald Trump appointee, said that Republicans were blatantly attempting to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against [counties] less likely to vote for their candidate.”

Another Georgia judge had already rejected the lawsuit, which targets ballots delivered in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County, on Saturday.

During an emergency hearing Saturday, Judge Kevin M. Farmer of the Superior Court of Fulton County dismissed Republicans’ allegations, citing a provision in Georgia law stating that absentee ballots can be returned until the end of voting on Election Day, according to The New York Times.

Republicans also claimed that collecting ballots over the weekend had prevented poll watchers from monitoring election offices while ballots were being turned in. During the hearing, Nadine Williams, director of Fulton County elections, explained that poll watchers were allowed at polling stations but had never been allowed in county offices, according to The Guardian. Williams later clarified that the process should be open to the public.

On Tuesday, Baker said that Republicans’ so-called concerns about poll watchers were a “red herring,” and that weekend hours have been part of the election process for years.

Trump’s campaign, alongside state and national Republicans, sent letters to Athens-Clarke, Chatham, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties demanding that officials keep ballots received after Friday separate from the rest, in anticipation of legal challenges.

A second lawsuit filed in Savannah targeted the other five counties.

Nearly 700,000 Georgians have already cast their ballots, according to an afternoon update from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who said that at this rate, there are likely to be 1.1 million ballots cast in the state by the end of the day, for a total of more than 5 million votes from the state.

A total of 105 absentee ballots were returned in person to election offices in Fulton County on Saturday.

The fake bomb threats that shut down two Georgia polling sites on Election Day stemmed from a “foreign state actor,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger revealed on Tuesday.

“We pretty well dispelled that very quickly,” Raffensperger said at a press conference. “But we want to make sure everything stays safe.… That was this morning, and law enforcement jumped right on that, and we knew it was coming from a foreign state actor.”

Five bomb threats were called in to law enforcement officials in the state at two separate voting sites in Union City. Raffensperger added that the non-credible threats affected “five to seven different precincts” in the key swing state.

“Outside of these brief interruptions, Election Day has remained quiet,” a Fulton County official said at a press conference. “We remain ready and prepared to deal with any other potential disruptions.”

The FBI said in a statement that it was “aware” of several bomb threats to voting locations across the country that originated from Russian emails, noting that none of the threats have been credible “thus far.”

“Election integrity is among the FBI’s highest priorities,” the federal intelligence agency said. “We will continue to work closely with our state and local law enforcement partners to respond to any threats to our elections and to protect our communities as Americans exercise their right to vote.”