Trump retweets video suggesting Covid-19 was created to 'steal' 2020 election and discredit his achievements
President Donald Trump is yet to concede to President-Elect Joe Biden more than six weeks after Election Day, as he and his allies continue to allege that widespread voter fraud in key battleground states gave Biden an illegitimate victory in the 2020 election. Among Trump's claims is that of an elaborate Democratic plot to remove him from the White House.
The president shared a series of messages on Twitter Sunday that were immediately labeled as "disputed" by the social media giant, with several critics brushing off his claims as conspiracy theories, Newsweek reported. One video retweeted by Trump showcased a number of theories to explain his failure to secure a second term in the White House, including media coverage, polling data, and rigged voting software. However, the video also appears to indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic consequences were engineered to taint the President's reputation and eventually "steal the election."
The summary of the plan in a minute.. https://t.co/dDRf45NkD1
— CJTRUTH (@cjtruth) December 20, 2020
Titled "How to Steal an Election", the compilation style clip opens with a voice narrating a string of claims questioning the severity of the pandemic, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US. "Start with a virus, import it into America, talk about it nonstop, call some governors...put patients into nursing homes, kill thousands, blame the president, keep blaming, blame some more," the narrator says, with "No Church in the Wild" by Kanye West and Jay-Z playing in the background.
"Lockdown small business [sic], kill the economy, push mail-in voting, stoke a race war," it continues, before criticizing the media's coverage of President-Elect Biden. The video went viral on Twitter and had received millions of views as of Sunday afternoon, especially after Trump's retweet. While Twitter attached a label to the tweet notifying users that its allegations were "disputed", Trump supporters praised its contents. Trump's critics, however, felt that unfounded claims about the election "create paranoia and fuel hatred, while spreading disinformation," according to Newsweek.
Trump has been accused of rarely adhering to health guidelines issued by medical officials within his own administration, despite increasing cases of COVID-19 being reported across the country. Instead, the President has strongly advocated for ending lockdowns and opening up schools and small businesses, arguing that "the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself." Trump also faced backlash for holding massive in-person rallies throughout the 2020 campaign trail and refusing to wear a mask in public.
In the final days of his re-election campaign, the POTUS repeatedly quipped that news coverage surrounding coronavirus would immediately dissipate after November 3. "That's all I hear about now. That's all I hear. Turn on television, 'COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID,'" he told supporters during a rally in North Carolina in October. "By the way, on November 4, you won't hear about it anymore."
Despite the President's controversial remarks, COVID-19 cases continue to spike across the US. However, the Trump administration has been lauded for its efforts under "Operation Warp Speed" — the federal program that fast-tracked funding and approval of a series of COVID-19 vaccines.
