President Trump says "we hereby claim" Michigan, citing claim of ballots being dumped
DETROIT (FOX 2) - Just moments after Joe Biden was declared the winner of Michigan's 16 electoral college votes, President Donald Trump claimed victory in the state, citing a debunked report of ballot dumping.
Biden was projected to win Michigan by FOX News around 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday. A few minutes later, the President sent out two tweets claiming a victory in Michigan, along with Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
"We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact,.....there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!"
The tweets were almost immediately flagged by twitter as official sources have not called the race when it was tweeted, saying that "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process."
Reports of the dumped ballots Trump is referring to started to spread Wednesday morning when conservative columnist Matt Mackowiak tweeted "An update gives Biden 100% of new votes — 128k+".
Mackowiak later deleted the tweet and said he sent it out honestly and did not intend to provide fake news. He said that he later learned the Michigan update was in reference to a typo in one county.
The screenshot and data discrepancy came from the account Decision Desk HQ, which tracks the votes, entered an extra zero into Joe Biden's total for Shiawasse County, giving him 153,710 votes instead of 15,371 at the time. The extra zero was removed and the correction was made.
But someone created and reversed screenshots, intentionally or not, and it made it seem as if Biden increased his votes by 138,339.