Trump Is Now Bragging About the Popular Vote, Which He Is Also Losing

Evan Vucci / Associated Press

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.After returning to the White House from a long day at his Virginia golf course on Saturday, President Trump still did not concede, but he did not really declare victory either. In his first public comments since an angry statement after the race was first called for Joe Biden, Trump tried out a new message: He had set a new record for votes received by an incumbent president.

71,000,000 Legal Votes. The most EVER for a sitting President!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

This spin was previously embraced by his longtime mouthpiece, Breitbart, which noted that Trump improved on Barack Obama’s 2012 showing by half a million votes:

President Donald Trump has received more popular votes than any of his predecessors, with over 70 million and counting as of Friday afternoon, breaking the previous record set by Barack Obama in 2008 by over 500,000. https://t.co/wDKiaeP0GE
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) November 7, 2020

This kind of bragging is less impressive when you consider the United States has 18 million more people than it did in 2012, but more to the point: Trump is losing the popular vote by a very large margin! He will have lost the popular vote by a very large margin in both of his presidential campaigns. Biden’s is currently winning by more than 4 million votes. That margin is going to grow as more ballots are counted in places like California. This is sort of like the Tampa Bay Rays bragging about winning more World Series games this year than any American League team.
Don’t let anyone tell you participation trophies are just for libs, I guess.