Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Quick Take
Vice President Kamala Harris received many celebrity endorsements leading up to the election, including from Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Eminem, Megan Thee Stallion and Lizzo. Social media posts have made the unfounded claim that these celebrities were collectively paid $20 million for their endorsements. We’ve found no evidence to support the claim.
Full Story
In the months leading up to the election, Vice President Kamala Harris received several high-profile celebrity endorsements.
In July, rapper Megan Thee Stallion appeared with Harris at a rally in Atlanta.
Television host Oprah Winfrey spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, where she endorsed Harris for president: “What we’re going to do is elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States,” Winfrey said.
In October, rappers Eminem and Lizzo both spoke at rallies for the vice president in Detroit.
Singer-songwriter Beyoncé endorsed Harris later that month at a rally in Houston.
Social media users have claimed, without any evidence, that these celebrities were collectively paid around $20 million for their endorsements.
We previously wrote about the unfounded claim that Beyoncé was paid $10 million, which a Harris campaign official said “is not true.” Now, posts are claiming others were paid millions.
A Nov. 12 Instagram post shared a clip from Fox News, in which anchor Harris Faulkner claimed that Beyoncé received $10 million from the Harris campaign for her endorsement, Megan Thee Stallion received $5 million, Lizzo received $3 million and Eminem received $1.8 million.
In a caption, the user claimed that Oprah received $1 million for her endorsement.
“Is that normally how it goes — you spend $20 million, you get yourself in debt to try to get a bunch of rich celebrities on stage?” Faulkner asks in the clip, referencing a claim from a Democratic National Committee member that the Harris campaign ended this election cycle with $20 million in debt.
Federal Election Commission records for the Harris campaign are only available through Oct. 16 and show no debts are owed. Unnamed sources close to the campaign told NBC News that some debt has been accrued.
Former professional basketball player Rod Benson shared the claim on Threads, writing, “We donated $1B to the Kamala campaign and a few days later they ask for more money cause they ended up with $20M in debt paying for celebrity endorsements.”
In a separate post, Benson added: “They paid Oprah $1M to endorse the campaign.”
Other users shared the same or similar numbers.
We’ve found no evidence to support the claim that these celebrities were paid anything in exchange for their endorsements.
As we’ve written, political campaigns are required to publicly disclose any paid endorsements. But the Harris campaign, through Oct. 16, lists only one endorsement-related expenditure — for $75 — in its FEC financial reports. It was made to the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, a pro-environment political action committee, in June 2023, when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection.
The Harris campaign did make two payments totaling $1 million to Harpo Productions Inc., Oprah Winfrey’s production company, on Oct. 15, for “event production.” Winfrey said in an Instagram comment that she was “not paid a dime” and that the payments went toward production fees for her interview with Harris in September. “I did not take any personal fee. However the people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were. End of story,” Winfrey wrote.
We found no record of Harris’ campaign paying Beyoncé, Eminem, Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, or their production companies, anything.
We asked the Harris campaign about these claims regarding the endorsements, but we haven’t received a response.
Claims about paid celebrity endorsements have been circulating in the weeks leading up to and following the election. On Nov. 14, rapper Cardi B responded on X to the claim that she was paid for her endorsement of Harris, writing, “I didn’t get paid a dollar.”
Sources
Breuninger, Kevin. “Oprah Winfrey endorses Kamala Harris, saying she represents ‘the best of America.’” CNBC. 21 Aug 2024.
Cappelletti, Joey. “At Detroit Rally for Kamala Harris, Eminem Endorses and Obama Reps.” Time. 23 Oct 2024.
Epstein, Reid J., et al. “Beyoncé Rallies for Harris in Houston With a Message for the Battlegrounds.” New York Times. 26 Oct 2024.
Gore, D’Angelo. “League of Conservation Voters.” FactCheck.org. 5 Sep 2024.
Korecki, Natasha. “Clashes, confusion and secrecy consume the Harris campaign’s finances.” NBC. 14 Nov 2024.
Levy, Piet, and Jay Stahl. “Cardi B supports Kamala Harris at campaign rally in Wisconsin: ‘Ready to make history?‘” USA Today. 2 Nov 2024.
Moorman, Taijuan, and KiMi Robinson. “Megan Thee Stallion performs ‘Savage’ at Kamala Harris rally: ‘Hotties for Harris.’” USA Today. 30 Jul 2024.
Nicholas, Peter, and Dareh Gregorian. “President Joe Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race.” NBC. 21 Jul 2024.
Nichols, Anna Liz. “‘It’s about damn time’ to elect Harris as president, Lizzo says.” Alabama Reflector. 20 Oct 2024.
Vakil, Caroline. “DNC critic sparks discussions about what went wrong for Harris.” The Hill. 13 Nov 2024.
Zinsner, Hadleigh. “Posts Make Unfounded Claim About Beyoncé’s Endorsement of Harris.” FactCheck.org. 31 Oct 2024.
Q: What will happen in Donald Trump’s New York state criminal case now that he is president-elect?
A: Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but the judge could decide that sentencing is no longer appropriate. If Trump does receive a sentence, it could be appealed, or the judgment could be deferred until 2029, when Trump would be out of office.
FULL QUESTION
What happens if Trump wins the election and then he gets sentenced at the end of the month?
FULL ANSWER
President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan on Nov. 26, after being convicted in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal election law violations stemming from an effort to keep quiet an alleged extramarital affair. Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s New York trial, already has twice postponed the sentencing, which was originally scheduled for July 11.
Now that Trump has been elected the next U.S. president, it’s possible that he may not be sentenced at all.
Trump appears in court for his hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images.
Before Trump’s sentencing hearing, Merchan, on Nov. 12, is scheduled to decide whether to completely dismiss the conviction based on a motion that Trump’s legal team filed after the Supreme Court’s July 1 ruling that presidents have immunity for certain official actions while in office.
However, CNN has reported that before Nov. 12, Trump’s attorneys are planning to try to get the sentencing cancelled by filing a motion “arguing that as a president-elect, he is entitled to the same constitutional protections as a sitting president and should be protected from any action by state prosecutors.”
If either motion is granted, the charges would be dismissed.
“But if the judge decides to keep the conviction intact, the former president’s lawyers are expected to ask Merchan to delay Trump’s sentencing so they can appeal,” CNN said. “And if that’s not granted, his attorneys are planning to appeal the immunity decision to state appellate courts and potentially all the way to the US Supreme Court to ask the courts to delay Trump’s sentencing until all appeals are exhausted, which could take months.”
If Merchan does proceed with sentencing, he has multiple options, as we’ve written.
Trump could get prison time, but that’s not likely, Cheryl Bader, a clinical associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, told us in a June interview.
For a first-time convicted felon, with a low-level, nonviolent felony and a person of advanced age, “under any circumstance like that, there’d be a relatively low chance of incarceration,” she said.
Other sentencing possibilities include probation or a “conditional discharge” with conditions other than incarceration or probation. The “simplest” option, she said, might be for the judge to fine Trump.
“He has not wanted to put his thumb on the scale during the election but now that the election is over, it will be interesting to see whether Judge Merchan will feel any pull to defer to the political process or will see this as perhaps the only opportunity for a judge to hold Trump accountable for his criminal conduct,” Bader said in an email to us on Nov. 7.
If any sentence of confinement is rendered, the judge could order that the penalty be imposed after Trump completes his four-year term as president in 2029. The Trump team could also appeal a leveled punishment.
But some legal experts don’t see it going that way.
“I think any reasonable judge wouldn’t sentence the president-elect,” Jill Konviser, a retired New York trial judge, told Politico for a story that said the “sentencing hearing in the hush money case almost certainly won’t happen.”
And Greg Germain, a corporate attorney and Syracuse University professor of law, told Newsweek that the hush money case needs to be “stayed,” or stopped. “If Judge Merchan tries to proceed with it, or even sets it for sentencing, the Department of Justice will intervene and ultimately the Supreme court will slap him down,” he was quoted saying.
But Germain said he doesn’t believe the judge will try to sentence Trump.
Unlike the pending federal prosecutions against him, Trump can’t pardon himself for state offenses.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Sources
Bader, Cheryl, clinical associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 7 Nov 2024.
Farley, Robert, et al. “Q&A on Trump’s Criminal Conviction.” FactCheck.org. 31 May 2024.
O’Driscoll, Sean. “Supreme Court Will ‘Slap Down’ Donald Trump Hush Money Case — Attorney.” Newsweek. 7 Nov 2024.
Orden, Erica. “Trump is due to be sentenced in 3 weeks. It probably won’t happen.” Politico. 6 Nov 2024.
Cole, Devan, et al. “What happens to Trump’s criminal and civil cases now that he’s been reelected.” CNN. 6 Nov 2024.
Reiss, Adam. “Judge delays Trump sentencing in hush money case until after November elect.” NBC News. 6 Sep 2024.
Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Quick Take
Social media users alleged bias against former President Donald Trump when a Google search on Election Day for “where to vote” returned an interactive map to find a person’s polling station when including the word “Harris” but not “Trump.” The reason is because “Harris” is a county in Texas, whereas “Trump” is not a location.
Full Story
As millions of Americans were headed to the polls to cast their ballots on Nov. 5, social media accounts were falsely claiming Google was trying to interfere with the election by providing different search results for Vice President Kamala Harris than it did for Trump.
In late October, the company had rolled out a map search result feature, as it had in previous years, to provide voters with locations when they searched for terms such as “where to vote” or “ballot dropboxes.”
It turned out the interactive map, allowing a person to put in their address, also appeared when querying “where can I vote for Harris,” but not when searching “where can I vote for Trump.”
A screenshot of Google’s “where to vote” panel. The interactive map appeared when adding the words “Harris” or “Vance,” but not “Trump,” since only the former two are location names.
Several social media accounts jumped to the conclusion that the differing search results were an effort by the tech behemoth to swing the election.
“BREAKING: Google shows a ‘Where to Vote’ section with a map for Kamala Harris, but not for Donald Trump,” wrote one influential post on X. “Google is the biggest corporate donor to the Democratic Party.”
X owner Elon Musk, a prominent supporter of Trump, reshared the post, asking, “Are others seeing this too?” He proceeded to post about it two more times within about 30 minutes, including a now-deleted post that read, “This is so messed up.”
But the discrepancy came down to the simple fact that only one candidate has a location-based name. Harris is a county in Texas; Trump is not a location.
Indeed, while we could replicate the results, we also found that we did not get the map result when adding Harris’ first name. We also found that the map appeared when adding a variety of common names that happen to be places: Jones, Davis, Williams, Franklin and Johnson — or when keeping the search terms simple, and just typing “where can I vote.”
Less than an hour after Musk’s reshare, Google had responded and explained the issue.
“The ‘where to vote’ panel is triggering for some specific searches bc Harris is also the name of a county in TX,” the company said in an X post. “Happens for ‘Vance’ too bc it’s also the name of a county. Fix is coming. Note very few people actually search for voting places this way.”
Vance County is in North Carolina.
Google implemented a fix shortly. According to a company blog post, the map search result feature uses information from the Voting Information Project, which is a collaboration between state and local election officials and Democracy Works, a nonpartisan civic technology nonprofit. Google helps fund the project.
As for the claim that Google is “the biggest corporate donor” to Democrats, the company itself can’t contribute money to candidates. Its political action committee contributed a slightly greater percentage of its donations to Republicans in this election cycle, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political contributions. Individual contributions from the employees of Google parent company Alphabet favored Democrats overall, but the total amount donated ranked 49th among the organizations OpenSecrets tracks.
Musk did reshare Google’s post, adding, “Thanks for the clarification.” A reader’s note was also appended to the original post he had shared. It explained that a variety of location names work, but not “if there is no city / county / state with the same name,” such as Kamala, Trump and Walz.
But even after the explanation, claims of election interference continued to circulate — and proceeded to distort Google’s response into an admission of wrongdoing.
“Google admits to Trump and Harris search engine discrepancy, says ‘fix is coming,’” read one X post. “This is ABSOLUTELY INTERFERING WITH THE US ELECTION.”
In the wee hours of the morning the day after the election — shortly before the Associated Press called the race for Trump — the same account continued to insist on malfeasance.
“Guess what happens to Google once the Trump administration investigates them for election interference?” a post read.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Sources
Kitchen, Geordy. “Find voting information on Google Search and Maps.” The Keyword (Google company blog). 21 Oct 2024.
News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle). “The ‘where to vote’ panel is triggering for some specific searches bc Harris is also the name of a county in TX. Happens for ‘Vance’ too bc it’s also the name of a county. Fix is coming. Note very few people actually search for voting places this way.” X. 5 Nov 2024.
Social media users have spread a quote attributed to Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, claiming he said “we won’t be certifying the election” if former President Donald Trump wins. Raskin responded, saying the quote is “100% fabricated” and that “America is having a free and fair election and Congress will certify the winner.” The origin of the posts appears to be a misleading account of Raskin’s comments in February.
Full Story
In the days leading up to Election Day, a supposed quote from Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland began spreading on social media, sometimes under the label of “breaking,” as in breaking news. No source was cited for the quote, and Raskin, in a Nov. 5 post on X, said it was “fabricated.”
The bogus quote read: “Let folks cast their votes for Trump if that’s their choice. But mark my words, we won’t be certifying the election. He might win, but we’ll ensure he doesn’t step foot in the Oval Office.”
Raskin, a former constitutional law professor who was the lead impeachment manager for the Trump impeachment related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, responded: “This fictional ‘quote’ is 100% fabricated. It’s one more lie in the stream of right-wing lies designed to undermine our election. Despite this actionable libel and all the disinformation, America is having a free and fair election and Congress will certify the winner.”
Another version of the circulating quote used nearly the same words, but claimed Raskin had said Trump “may be elected but we are not going to let him be inaugurated.” We traced that quote back to an Oct. 28 podcast episode, in which Mike Benz, who worked in the State Department during the Trump administration, gave his interpretation of something Raskin said in February about a case that was before the Supreme Court at the time. Benz’s paraphrase of Raskin’s remarks is missing some important context.
The podcast showed a clip of Raskin, labeled with the date “Aug. 5, 2024,” but the clip actually comes from a Feb. 17 event at the Washington, D.C., bookstore Politics and Prose. The Supreme Court then was considering Trump’s appeal of a Colorado state Supreme Court ruling that said Trump was disqualified from the presidency based on Section 3, the insurrection clause, of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and shouldn’t appear on the state’s 2024 election ballot. The insurrection clause says that a person can’t hold state or federal office if they had previously held office and sworn an oath to support the Constitution and “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
The state court ruled that Trump had engaged in insurrection based on his actions around Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol and attempted to derail the certification of the 2020 electoral votes. At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court case, challenges had been filed in many other states to also remove Trump from the ballot.
At the February bookstore event, Raskin expressed concern about what would happen if the U.S. Supreme Court “decision says that it’s really up to Congress on Jan. 5 or Jan. 6, 2025, to disqualify him at the counting of the Electoral College votes, which really could lead to something akin to Civil War, if that’s, if that’s what the suggestion is, which is what I think I heard when I went to the oral argument.”
The podcast didn’t use that clip, but showed Raskin again addressing the issue later at the same event. He said that “what can be put into the Constitution can slip away from you very quickly” and talked about what the court might do.
Raskin, Feb. 7: And the greatest example going on right now before our very eyes is section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which they’re just disappearing with a magic wand as if it doesn’t exist, even though it could not be clearer what it’s stating. And so you know they want to kick it to Congress so it’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified. And then we need bodyguards for everybody in Civil War conditions. All because the nine justices, not all of them, but these justices who have not many cases to look at every year, not that much work to do, a huge staff, great protection, simply do not want to do their job and interpret what the great 14th Amendment means.
The Supreme Court ruled the next month, on March 4, that Colorado couldn’t remove Trump from the ballot, with a majority saying that the “responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States.” The justices said that Congress would have to pass legislation to enforce the insurrection clause. They didn’t say that Congress would decide such issues on Jan. 6 when the electoral votes are certified, as Raskin had feared in his remarks at the bookstore.
On the day of the ruling, Raskin told Axios that he was working on legislation so that Congress could “act.” But Congress didn’t act; Trump was on the ballot and became the Republican presidential nominee.
In the podcast, Benz claimed that “what they’re planning to do, they’re going to make the argument that Donald Trump is disqualified under the 14th Amendment.”
We didn’t find an instance of Raskin saying anything like that recently. We asked his office about the February remarks, but we haven’t received a response.
Raskin told Axios last month that if Trump “won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it.” But the news site reported that Raskin said Trump “is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we’re talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments.”
The congressman also said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Nov. 2: “So when I say we will support a free and fair election, no, we won’t allow them to steal it in the states or steal it in the Department of Justice or steal it with any other election official in the country. If it’s a free and fair election, we will do what we’ve always done, we will honor it.”
In an email sent to us and others, Raskin’s office said that he “has always remained committed to certifying the results of a free and fair election,” pointing to his Nov. 5 statement on the viral claims.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Sources
Raskin, Jamie (@RepRaskin). “This fictional ‘quote’ is 100% fabricated. It’s one more lie in the stream of right-wing lies designed to undermine our election. Despite this actionable libel and all the disinformation, America is having a free and fair election and Congress will certify the winner.” X. 5 Nov 2024.
@LarryDJonesJr. “BREAKING: Jamie Raskin said, ‘Let folks cast their votes for Trump if that’s their choice. But mark my words, we won’t be certifying the election. He might win, but we’ll ensure he doesn’t step foot in the Oval Office.’” X. 4 Nov 2024.
@realTrumpNewsX. “Jamie Raskin : Let people vote for Trump if they want, we’re not gonna certify the election anyways, so he may be elected but we are not going to let him be inaugurated.” X. 31 Oct 2024.
PBD Podcast. YouTube.com. 28 Oct 2024.
Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Other Rights. Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office. Constitution.congress.gov. Accessed 6 Nov 2024.
Supreme Court of the State of Colorado. Supreme Court Case No. 23SA300. 19 Dec 2023.
Gamio, Lazaro et. al. “Tracking Efforts to Remove Trump From the 2024 Ballot.” New York Times. updated 4 Mar 2024.
Politics and Prose. “Rick Hasen — A Real Right to Vote – with Representative Jamie Raskin and Sherrilyn Ifill.” YouTube.com. 17 Feb 2024.
Howe, Amy. “Supreme Court rules states cannot remove Trump from ballot for insurrection.” SCOTUSblog. 4 Mar 2024.
Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson. No. 23-719. Supreme Court of the United States. 4 Mar 2024.
Solender, Andrew. “Scoop: Top Democrat ‘working on’ bill responding to Trump ballot ruling.” Axios. 4 Mar 2024.
Solender, Andrew. “Scoop: Some top Dems won’t commit to certifying a Trump win.” Axios. 10 Oct 2024.
Raskin, Jamie. HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Grabien.com. 2 Nov 2024.
We’ll know soon enough who won the 2024 general elections for president, Congress and other important positions. But we don’t have to wait a second longer to find out this year’s FactCheck Award winners.
On Election Day, we take a (short) break from the serious work of fact-checking to highlight unusual political ads from the campaign cycle. The prizes, which are just for much needed kicks, are traditionally presented to ads that stood out for various reasons.
For instance, one of the recognized ads was about Bigfoot looking for a man who didn’t want to be found. And another honoree featured people who badly needed more to wear than hospital gowns.
Thanks for reading!
Analysis
Cheekiest Ad About Health Care Reform
Winner: Nadia Milleron, candidate for U.S. House in Massachusetts
Milleron, an independent, wants to make sure U.S. residents, particularly those in Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District, can obtain, or obtain better, health insurance. This ad from her campaign helps voters visualize how bad it is for the uninsured or underinsured.
“It’s embarrassing. People all over western Massachusetts suffering from poor coverage,” the narrator says. “Poor coverage for prescription drugs and medical visits, if you can even get in to see a doctor. Some of us have no coverage at all.”
As the narrator goes on about the dire situation, people are shown going about their day, wearing those unflattering hospital gowns that leave them exposed. There are blurred buttocks everywhere you turn.
Things “will never change as long as we keep electing the same old Democrats and Republicans,” Milleron says in the ad, which could be on to something. Maybe politicians would be more motivated to expand access to quality health care if they had to look at people’s bare backsides all day.
Steamiest Ad About Contraception
Winner: Progress Action Fund
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said this ad about birth control – and voyeurism? – is “an instant finalist for the political ad hall of fame.” We don’t disagree. It’s also a little spicy, and NSFW (not safe for work), so we’ve taken precautions and did not embed it in this story.
The “Republican congressman” in the Progress Action Fund ad.
It starts with a man and woman kissing in bed, about to do the deed, and they decide to use protection before they go any further. But as the man reaches for a condom from the bedside table, it’s intercepted by a disapproving “Republican congressman,” who somehow has been in the room and observing the whole time. The frightened pair tell the unwelcome onlooker to mind his business and leave, but he doesn’t.
“I won the last election. I’m not going anywhere,” the pretend politician says. “I’m just going to watch and make sure you don’t do anything illegal.” Kinky!
The liberal Progress Action Fund released the ad in July 2023, urging Ohioans to “keep Republicans out of your bedroom” by voting against a ballot measure that critics said aimed to roll back reproductive rights. The group has since created several spinoffs accusing conservative lawmakers of going after abortion, the morning-after pill, Medicare and pornography. Some of those ads are racier, so we won’t be embedding those either.
Achievement in Ad Upcycling
Winner: Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota
If this ad looks familiar, that’s probably because it features some of the same footage from a popular ad that Phillips ran during his 2018 campaign for Congress. The original starred Bigfoot, “an expert on elusive creatures,” searching for Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen, who the ad suggested may not exist. In the reworked version, the mythical icon is on the hunt for President Joe Biden in New Hampshire, where Biden skipped the state’s Democratic primary this year to protest it being scheduled before South Carolina’s.
“I mean, how can you have tens of thousands of people looking for you all the time and not one person finds you?” a not-self-aware Bigfoot asks. It looked all over for Biden, but never found him, which was not surprising. But Bigfoot did see Phillips, who made New Hampshire the focus of his longshot campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
The 2018 ad, which went viral, may have played a role in Phillips defeating Paulsen. The 2024 ad, which was just as good if not better, couldn’t do the same for Phillips against the sitting president. But, in the end, the congressman got what he wanted anyway: someone other than Biden as the Democratic nominee.
Most Dramatic Solar Eclipse
Winner: Former President Donald Trump
Way back in 2017, from the White House balcony, then-President Donald Trump memorably flouted safety guidance and stared directly at a solar eclipse without the recommended eyewear. He took his rebel status further with this ad, getting an even closer look at the sun.
As Ric Flair’s wrestling entrance music plays, and after the words “The most important moment in human history is taking place in 2024” appear on screen, a large figure begins to slowly move into the path of a beaming sun. It soon becomes apparent to those watching the ad, and the excited people in the ad wearing solar viewers, that it’s a silhouette of Trump’s head, not the moon, causing the temporary darkness.
“We will save America and make it great again,” the on-screen text later says. The ad ends with repeated chants of “USA” and the words “Trump 2024” on a black background.
This could have been a cool way to announce his third presidential campaign, rather than a fact-challenged speech from Mar-a-Lago. Instead, the ad, which was posted on Truth Social, capitalized on the public’s obsession with the actual total solar eclipse that took place in April. Coincidentally, the next visible eclipse of that kind in the U.S. is not until 2044, a year that will feature another presidential election.
The Mike Gundy Award for Being a Man
Winner: Creatives for Harris
Gundy, the coach of Oklahoma State University’s football team, got heated defending his players in a press conference years ago and told reporters, “Come after me. I’m a man. I’m 40.” The opening of this pro-Kamala Harris ad reminded us of that famous rant about manhood.
The six guys in this ad all make it known that they are men, too, and then explain some of the reasons they are “man enough” to support a female candidate for president, including an ability to braid hair; admit when they’re lost; and not be afraid of bears, women or showing emotion. One of the manly men is so fearless that he says not only can he fix carburetors, but eats them for breakfast, which sounds unhealthy and dangerous.
Not everyone was a fan of the video, with at least one person on social media calling it “the cringiest political ad ever created.” Whatever you think of the ad, let us be clear about one thing: It wasn’t produced by the Harris-Walz campaign, as some have wrongly claimed. It was created by Jacob Reed, a comedy producer, director and writer, for an unaffiliated group called Creatives for Harris.
“I think we’re overdue for a redefinition of what it means to be a man in America and I hope this campaign can start to shape that conversation,” Reed wrote in a Substack post about the video. “Because even though it’s more sketch comedy than political ad, what these men are saying is true — except being afraid of bears.
“A bear will straight-up kill you,” he warned.
The Ad Keeping It 100% Weird
Winner: Won’t PAC Down
If the men in the last ad were cringy, those in this one could be called creepy. That was by design, as the ad, from another group supporting Harris, is titled “These Guys Are Just Weird,” which is what Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has been saying about Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, for months. Let’s just say that the actors in the ad – playing “MAGA Republicans” overly concerned with Americans’ sex lives – understood the assignment.
For example, the way the first guy turns around to the camera is hardly normal, and don’t get us started on what’s happening with his lips. It gets stranger from there. Another guy, a heavy sweater with strong opinions about in vitro fertilization, says he’s “definitely not a serial killer,” but we’re definitely not convinced. The men also bring up an unfortunate case of oversharing by House Speaker Mike Johnson, but the less said about that the better.
The liberal super PAC behind the ad, Won’t PAC Down, was originally created to help Biden, who was then on his way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination, reach a younger demographic of voters. We don’t know if the ad helped the group reach its intended audience, but it definitely got our attention.
The B-roll Blues Award
Winner: Derrick Anderson, candidate
for U.S. House in Virginia
No one has said a word about the first five minutes and 27 seconds of this nearly six-minute video of b-roll that Anderson’s campaign posted online to legally provide footage of the Republican candidate that political action committees could use in their own ads supporting him. It’s the last 24 seconds that have caused all the “family” drama.
At that point, Anderson is seen talking and/or posing with a woman and three young girls. If you thought they were his wife and kids, they’re not. Anderson is engaged. But his fiancee is not in the video, and he has no children. Now, Democrats won’t let Anderson or Virginia’s 7th District voters forget it.
A screen capture from the House Majority PAC’s anti-Derrick Anderson TV ad
“Anderson got caught lying again, faking a family,” says an ad that the campaign of Anderson’s opponent, Eugene Vindman, began running last month. House Majority PAC, a super PAC supporting Democratic House candidates, released its own ad that says “Anderson was caught using a fake wife and kids for his campaign.” It features scenes of an Anderson stand-in interacting with cardboard versions of the woman and children from the campaign video.
The criticism has frustrated Anderson so much that his campaign sent cease and desist letters to TV stations airing such ads. “It’s absolutely unbelievable that this is what my opponent is focusing on,” he said in an interview last month, noting that he’s friends with the family in the video. “Look, it’s b-roll footage. Every campaign in the nation, including my opponent, takes pictures and videos with people throughout the district.”
Honestly, we also can’t remember this much attention being paid to b-roll – at least, not since 2014, when Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign posted a roughly two-minute video that began with about 12 seconds too many of him smiling awkwardly. Anderson probably could have saved himself a lot of grief if he had just done the same.
Saddest Donald Trump Impression
Winner: Rep. Eric Swalwell of California
Swalwell doesn’t portray Trump in this ad, but he’s still responsible. The congressman’s campaign paid for this ad mocking the former president for some of his outrageous statements. The ad suggests that Trump’s outbursts, such as his false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats,” make him more qualified to live in a retirement community than reoccupy the White House.
But of all the Trump impressions that we’ve seen, this one may be our least favorite. The actor channeling Trump has his signature blue suit, red tie, blonde hair and orangish face. He also has some of his mannerisms, his impressive memory and even his intense dislike of Taylor Swift. However, he doesn’t really sound like him, which is kind of important.
Think of it. If you’re going to do a Trump impression, you have to get his voice, or at least something close to it. This version is a yuge miss the likes of which we’ve never seen in the history of our country.
Grossest Attack Ad
Winner: MAGA Inc.
New York magazine predicted in March 2023 that “Ron DeSantis Eating Pudding With His Fingers Will End His 2024 Bid” to become the Republican nominee for president. Not quite, but this ad, from the pro-Trump group MAGA Inc., didn’t do him any favors.
“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong. And we’re not just talking about pudding,” the ad’s narrator says, referring to a March 2023 Daily Beast story about what purportedly happened when DeSantis got hungry on a private jet in 2019. While the ad goes on to say that DeSantis put his “dirty fingers all over senior entitlements,” a claim that we wrote about, the most damning – and disgusting – part may be the images of, and the sounds made by, a man devouring a cup of pudding with his fingers.
Interestingly, when given the opportunity, DeSantis didn’t deny enjoying the dessert snack sans spoon. “I don’t remember ever doing that,” he said in a “Piers Morgan Uncensored” interview, suggesting that it may have happened when he was just a child.
Regrettably, we remember the images from the ad very well.
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Late in the afternoon on Election Day, former President Donald Trump posted to social media an unsupported claim about “massive CHEATING” in Philadelphia, which he claimed had drawn the attention of law enforcement.
The Philadelphia Police Department, the Philadelphia district attorney, a Republican city commissioner and the Pennsylvania Department of State all refuted the claim.
“A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social at 4:39 p.m. on Election Day.
We reached out to the Trump campaign for information about where the alleged cheating was occurring and what law enforcement was responding, but we did not receive a response.
The Philadelphia Police Department told CNN it was not aware of any election-related issues that had prompted a law enforcement response.
Responding to Trump’s post, Philadelphia City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, posted on X, “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation.”
“It is yet another example of disinformation,” wrote Bluestein, who is also a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s task force on elections. “Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.”
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner also weighed in via X, calling Trump’s claim “unfounded.”
“The only talk about massive cheating has come from one of the candidates, Donald J. Trump,” Krasner wrote. “There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation. 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.”
Asked to comment on Trump’s post, the press office for the Pennsylvania Department of State — which oversees the state’s elections — sent us this statement: “Pennsylvania counties, including Philadelphia, are running a safe and secure election.”
Trump has made unsubstantiated claims about Philadelphia before. In September, Trump cited the dubious results of a poll commissioned by a conservative group as the foundation for his claim of rampant voter fraud among mail-in voters in Pennsylvania.
We will update this story if Trump or his campaign provides any details to support the claim.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.
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Quick Take
Posts shared on Facebook make an unfounded claim of racially motivated threats of violence in Gwinnett County, Georgia, “from now until the Inauguration.” The county sheriff’s office said it had “not received any information indicating threats to any group(s) on or after election day.”
Full Story
The 2024 election season has seen a rash of political violence. There were two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, one of which resulted in the death of a campaign rally attendee. An office used by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team in Tempe, Arizona, was damaged by gunfire three times. Law enforcement officials also have seen a wave of threats against poll workers and political activists ahead of Election Day, the New York Times reported.
Amid that atmosphere of violence and threats of violence, a chain of Facebook posts — citing an unnamed deputy in the Gwinnett County, Georgia, sheriff’s office — spread an unfounded claim of threats against Black women in Georgia.
The Facebook user who shared the post on Nov. 1 wrote, in part: “‘Hey ladies, I just received this from a friend who works in the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s office!!! Be on Alert… Last night, a deputy told a family that local White Supremacists/ KKK members originating out of Lexington, NC, are planning to attack from now until the Inauguration. They are plotting against Blacks, especially black women because in their eyes, we are easy targets! Please be vigilant! Try not to do anything alone, especially after dark! This is not a hoax or a rumor! The deputy showed paperwork that the police department has.”
Similar text was shared by other users on Facebook.
But the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office said on its Facebook page on Nov. 2 that it has not received any information on such threats.
“The Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office has been made aware of a circulating text thread suggesting potential attacks on African American women ‘from now through the inauguration.’ We have not received any information indicating threats to any group(s) on or after election day,” the sheriff’s office said.
“Hateful discourse such as this aims to instill fear in the community and disrupt us from exercising our constitutional rights. The Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office remains dedicated to protecting all citizens and we will continue to monitor and respond accordingly to all suspicious and threatening behavior.”
The sheriff’s office also said it is working with “local, state, and federal authorities to stay current on any potential threats surrounding the general election,” and it directed reports of threats to local law enforcement or the tip line, 770-619-6655.
Sources
Farrow, Fritz. “Harris campaign office in Arizona shot at for third time in a month, police say.” ABC News. 9 Oct 2024.
Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office. Facebook post. 2 Nov 2024.
McLean, Danielle. “Posts Misrepresent Police Reports Preceding Trump Rally in New York.” FactCheck.org. Updated 26 Sep 2024.
Thrush, Glenn, Adam Goldman, Alan Feuer and Eileen Sullivan. “Election Officials Face Torrent of Threats as Nov. 5 Looms.” New York Times. 25 Oct 2024.
Parker, Ned and Peter Eisler. “New cases of political violence roil U.S. ahead of contentious election.” Reuters. 21 Oct 2024.
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Quick Take
A misspelling of former President Donald Trump’s name occurred on an optional ballot review screen in Virginia, prompting an unfounded claim on social media of “election fraud.” The error was a typo that appeared only on the ballot review screen, not on actual ballots, and would not affect any votes, election officials said.
Full Story
Virginia’s voting process includes an optional ballot review screen, which is designed to display a voter’s selections before a ballot is cast. The optional screen helps voters verify their choices and correct any errors.
But a video shared on social media that shows a misspelling on a ballot review screen has raised unfounded allegations of voter fraud in Virginia’s Washington County.
An Oct. 29 post on Instagram shows a video with former President Donald Trump’s name misspelled as “Triump” on a ballot review screen. The accompanying text claims, “This was a voter in Virginia 4 days ago. Why is there an I in Donald J Trump’s name?”
The X account RealAF Patriot shared the video with a message that read, “ELECTION FRAUD IN VIRGINIA!? A voter shows that they have Trump spelled incorrectly as Triump. Is that so votes won’t register for Trump?” The post received more than 3 million views, according to the platform.
Andrea M. Gaines, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Elections, told us in an email that the misspelling of Trump’s name occurred on equipment in Washington County. “We cannot confirm the origin of the video,” she said.
But Gaines said the “review screen does not affect tabulation of ballots or reporting of results.”
Derek N. Lyall, director of elections and general registrar for Washington County, told us in an email, “All Washington County voters cast their votes on paper ballots. The names of all candidates are spelled properly on the paper ballots.”
Lyall explained that the misspelling was a typographical error on the optional ballot review screen, which only activates if a voter specifically requests it before inserting a ballot. “Out of 10,000+ voters who have cast their ballots in Washington County, fewer than twenty voters have requested to utilize this optional ballot review screen,” he noted.
Lyall said the error was discovered too late to reprogram the voting equipment for the election. However, he said all voting equipment had been thoroughly tested and was operating as intended. “Our equipment is operating as designed and is tabulating ballots in accordance with voters’ choices. The single typographical error on the optional ballot review screen will have no effect on anyone’s vote,” he said.
Lyall also said a notice would be posted in every polling place advising voters of this error on Election Day.
Virginia has voted for a Democrat in the last four presidential elections. In 2020, Trump lost the state by 10 percentage points, but overwhelmingly won Washington County with 75.6% of the vote.
Sources
270 to Win. “Virginia: Recent Presidential Elections.” Accessed 5 Nov 2024.
Murphy, Joe. “Two charts and a map to help make sense of all the early voting data.” NBC News. 4 Nov 2024.
Gaines, Andrea. External affairs manager, Virginia Department of Elections. Email to FactCheck.org. 4 Nov 2024.
Lyall, Derek N. Director of elections and general registrar, Washington County, Virginia. Email to FactCheck.org. 4 Nov 2024.
Virginia Public Access Project. “Early Voting in Virginia.” Accessed 5 Nov 2024.
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It is possible, even likely, that we will not have a projected winner of the presidential race on Nov. 5 – Election Day. And that doesn’t mean there’s something nefarious going on with the vote-counting.
Election experts say when a winner is projected will largely depend on how close the race is. The closer the race, the longer it is likely to take to declare a winner. Delays are also tied to counting mail-in ballots and the state rules about when and how they can be counted.
In 2020, the Associated Press and other major news outlets did not call the race for Joe Biden until Nov. 7 – four days after Election Day.
“This year, it could go either way,” John Lapinski, director of elections at NBC News, and Charles Riemann, the senior analytics manager for elections at NBC News, wrote on Oct. 30. “It may take as long as a week for the NBC News Decision Desk to project a presidential winner, or it could happen as early as Wednesday, even by Wednesday morning.”
But, they wrote, “The days of projecting a winner on election night itself are almost certainly over.”
Polling suggests the race is extremely close, particularly in a handful of swing states that may decide the election.
In 2020, not only was the race in some swing states extremely close — Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes and Arizona by 10,457 — but vote-counting took longer than usual because so many mail-in ballots were cast due to the pandemic. Nearly 70 million people voted via mail-in ballot in 2020, constituting 43.1% of the electorate and roughly 20 percentage points more than in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. As of Nov. 4, 67.2 million mail-in ballots had been requested for 2024, and 36.7 million had been returned, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
Election personnel sort absentee ballot applications for storage at the Gwinnett County Board of Voter Registrations and Elections offices on Nov. 7, 2020, in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Several counties in Georgia continued to count ballots even as news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner of the race for president. Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images.
While states have taken steps to speed up the processing of mail-in ballots, Pennsylvania — arguably considered the most important swing state in this election — is one of the few states that still do not allow the pre-canvassing of ballots prior to Election Day. (Pre-canvassing means that outer envelopes are opened and ballots are extracted and flattened to prepare them for counting machines. In addition, an initial scan is performed to identify any ballots missing a signature. The actual counting of mail-in ballots doesn’t begin until Election Day.) As a result, if the vote counts are close after the tallies on Election Day in Pennsylvania, it could take an extra day, or even several days, to determine a winner as all of the mail-in ballots are counted.
On Election Day, “there are five or six or seven [counties in Pennsylvania] that are not going to be able to do that [finish counting mail-in ballots] because of volume,” Eric Kraeutler, chair of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based election watchdog, said at an election law forum sponsored by the Knight Foundation on Oct. 4.
Those include Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, both of which have a strong Democratic voter registration advantage. Pittsburgh, the state’s second most populous city after Philadelphia, is in Allegheny County.
“In an election as close as what is being forecast for Pennsylvania, that almost certainly means that by the end of Election Day, Donald Trump will be ahead in Pennsylvania,” Kraeutler said. “It is very important that the public understands” that vote counting is expected to extend beyond Election Day, “and that is a function of the volume of the votes.”
The New York Times mapped out when seven swing states are likely to finish counting votes, with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin likely expecting to finish after election night and Arizona and Nevada expecting to take several days. The Times also surveyed election officials in every state, and among those who answered, most expected to finish counting the day after the election. Officials in several states said it could take days to count all of their ballots. But again, all of that is expected.
In a CNN podcast, CNN Vice President and Political Director David Chalian said “given that Arizona and Nevada and Pennsylvania are likely to take some time to count all of their votes, I would say Tuesday night is not likely, but I don’t rule out a Wednesday resolution.”
‘Stop the Count’
It was widely reported in 2020 that it would take longer than usual to declare a winner, particularly because many states expanded mail-in voting due to the pandemic. When Trump repeatedly and baselessly suggested in the days before the election that counting mail-in ballots after Election Day would result in fraud, we wrote a story on Oct. 29, 2020, “Nothing Untoward About Counting Ballots After Election Day.”
Nonetheless, two days before the election, Trump insisted, “We should know the result of the election on Nov. 3 — the evening of Nov. 3. That’s the way it’s been, and that’s the way it should be. What’s going on in this country? What’s going on?”
On election night in 2020, several of Trump’s campaign advisers warned him not to declare victory because the results were still very much in doubt.
In an interview he gave to the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump Campaign Manager William Stepien said he met with Trump and others at the president’s residence on election night and he recommended that Trump tell the nation that “votes were still being counted. It’s … too early to call the race.”
“The president disagreed with that” advice, he told the committee. “He thought I was wrong.”
Trump declared victory shortly before 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 4.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said of the ongoing vote-counting. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election.”
According to the Jan. 6 committee report, Trump’s decision to falsely declare victory on election night was “premeditated” and part of his strategy.
“STOP THE COUNT!” Trump tweeted at 9:12 a.m. on Nov. 5.
Even after Biden was projected the winner, in the weeks and months that followed, Trump continued to peddle the falsehood that votes counted after election night were somehow fraudulent.
“We were up by 293,000 votes in Michigan, 112,000 votes in Wisconsin, 356,000 votes in Georgia, and nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania, all swing states,” Trump said in late December of that year. “These numbers were absolutely impossible for Joe Biden to overcome, and the Democrats knew it and everybody forecasting knew it and understood it well.
“Our nation’s greatest political professionals were calling to congratulate me on our victory,” Trump said. “Then suddenly everything started to disappear. Everything started to change. The vote counting abruptly stopped in multiple states. In the middle of the night, a series of massive and statistically inconceivable vote dumps overturned the results in state after state.”
But what Trump called “vote dumps” were just the routine reporting of the results of mail-in ballots. And experts say if the election is close enough this time around, it could again take days to count enough votes to declare a winner. (It will take weeks for states to officially certify results.)
This election, Trump has said he’ll immediately accept the results “if it’s a fair election.” But he is also falsely suggesting there is something wrong with counting votes beyond election night. At a Nov. 3 rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said he had heard it would take weeks to determine a winner. “They’re going to say we may take an extra 12 days. … And what do you think happens during that 12 days? What do you think happens? These elections have to be, they have to be decided by 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 on Tuesday night. Bunch of crooked people.”
“What we saw in 2020 is … that window of time between the polls being closed at 8 p.m. on election night and the race being called as a period of vulnerability where people were seeking to undermine confidence in the results,” Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt told NPR.
If the result in any particular state is essentially tied, nearly all the votes need to be counted before a winner can be confidently projected, Lapinski and Riemann of the NBC News elections team wrote. And that can take days.
States That Could Hold Up Projecting a Winner
As was the case in 2020, Pennsylvania could again tip the scale for one candidate or the other. Lapinski and Riemann said they expect 98% to 99% of the vote in Pennsylvania to be counted by Wednesday morning. Whether that is enough to call the race remains to be seen.
“It’s difficult to predict when there will be a projected winner in Pennsylvania,” Kraeutler told us via email. “I expect we will know the results of in-person voting no later than 1:00 or 2:00 am on Wednesday. The canvassing of mail-in ballots is likely to go on throughout the early morning hours and possibly into the next day or two days. The timing of any projected result will depend not only on the number of ballots counted, but also the closeness of the margin. The closer the margin, the more votes will need to be counted to project a winner.”
Nearly 2.2 million mail-in ballots have been requested and nearly 1.8 million of them have been cast as of Nov. 4 in Pennsylvania, according to the Election Lab at the University of Florida.
Part of the delay in counting mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania is that it is one of only seven states — Wisconsin is the only other considered a swing state — that cannot begin processing early ballots before Election Day. Michigan changed its laws after the 2020 election to allow large counties to begin processing mail-in ballots eight days before Election Day, although the counting of ballots cannot start until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
The Pennsylvania House, which is controlled by Democrats, passed legislation in May to allow pre-canvassing, but the bill stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans blocked a similar effort in Wisconsin.
“If you’re ever wondering why Pennsylvania takes some time to come up with the results, if you have millions of ballots that you can’t start [preparing and counting] until Election Day, guess what, that’s going to take some time,” Kathy Boochvar, who served as the secretary of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the 2020 election, said in an election law webinar with reporters last month.
Since 2020, Philadelphia and Allegheny counties among others in Pennsylvania have increased their workforce and acquired new processing machines that will make counting of mail-in ballots go quicker, Kraeutler said. “But so long as Pennsylvania law does not allow the canvassing process to start until Election Day, there is a possibility that election results will not be known until one or two days later,” he added.
“There’s also a real possibility that the entire national election comes down to getting vote totals for Pennsylvania,” Kraeutler said.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, Trump and Harris are virtually tied in Pennsylvania.
But Pennsylvania isn’t the only state that could hold up media companies from projecting a winner. Lapinski and Riemann warn that if the election comes down to very close votes in Arizona and Nevada, “forget any thoughts of a Wednesday resolution.”
“Typically, Arizona has as much as 20% of its vote still to count after election night — mainly late-arriving mail ballots,” they wrote. “And there are very substantial differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of who votes when (early versus on Election Day). This makes it nearly impossible to project a winner in Arizona on election night.”
Indeed, in Maricopa County, where more than half of the state’s residents reside, Deputy Elections Director Jennifer Liewer told KPNX 12News election officials expect it will take “between 10 and 13 days to complete tabulation of all of the ballots,” in part because of a high voter interest in the race and because of a lengthy ballot that will take more time for election workers to tabulate.
That doesn’t mean it will take that long for media companies to declare a winner, but it could if Arizona’s electoral votes end up deciding the race and the results are exceedingly close.
As for Nevada, it is “a state that has a large amount of early voting, both absentee and in person, that is not counted on election night,” Lapinski and Riemann wrote. “In the past, nearly a quarter of the vote is still not counted by the Wednesday morning after Election Day. Given that the state has been historically close in presidential elections, the probability of calling a close race with a large amount of uncounted vote is very low.
“The bottom line: In Arizona and Nevada, it will likely take a few days, perhaps longer, to know the winner.”
None of that is indicative of voter fraud.
“When [we] will know has nothing to do with vote tampering, it has to do with how close the election is,” Lapinski, who also is the director of the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, told us via email.
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In the waning days of his campaign, former President Donald Trump has further embraced some of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s incorrect or controversial views on health, including vaccines and fluoride.
In a Nov. 3 telephone interview with NBC News’ Dasha Burns, Trump appeared open to removing fluoride in the nation’s water supply and taking action to limit vaccines.
When asked if “banning certain vaccines might be on the table,” Trump replied, “Well, I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” referring to Kennedy.
Trump similarly said he hadn’t discussed fluoride yet with Kennedy, but when asked about Kennedy’s announcement that the Trump administration would advise against water fluoridation on Day One, he said, “it sounds OK to me.”
Small amounts of fluoride are added to drinking water in much of the U.S. to prevent tooth decay and are accepted as safe and effective by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and expert groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The founder of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that spreads anti-vaccine misinformation, Kennedy has been an outspoken opponent of vaccines and water fluoridation for many years. He has continued to make false and misleading claims about vaccines — including the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism — during his presidential run, first as a Democrat, and later as an independent.
In August, Kennedy endorsed Trump for president and has since become part of the candidate’s transition team. He’s also partnered with Trump on the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, much of which is focused on chronic disease. There’s no question that Americans suffer too much from chronic conditions, but as we’ve written, Kennedy has a history of blaming such diseases on the wrong exposures, oversimplifying their causes and implausibly claiming that he can end the chronic disease epidemic “overnight.”
With Kennedy and on his own, Trump has previously repeated vaccine falsehoods. In a July telephone call with Kennedy, which one of Kennedy’s sons posted to social media, Trump incorrectly suggested that childhood vaccine doses are too large and are dangerous to kids. There’s no evidence that the current vaccination schedule is harmful to children.
In the phone call, which occurred prior to Kennedy’s decision to suspend his campaign and back Trump, the former president appeared to want to collaborate, telling Kennedy, “I would love you to do something.” Since the endorsement, there has been speculation that Kennedy might serve in a top health-related position in Trump’s government, much to the consternation of many scientists and public health experts.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said of Kennedy during an Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden.
“I said he could do it. He could do anything he wants,” Trump said at an event in Arizona on Oct. 31. “He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants everything. I think it’s great.”
Trump embraces Kennedy during a campaign rally on Aug. 23 in Glendale, Arizona. Kennedy announced that day that he was suspending his presidential campaign and supporting Trump. Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images.
In a video call with members of the campaign that circulated online, Kennedy said that Trump had “promised” him “control” of the nation’s public health agencies, mentioning Health and Human Services and some of its subagencies, the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
The campaign, however, would not confirm Kennedy’s claims — and called discussions of who would serve in the administration “premature.” Anonymous sources told NBC News that Kennedy would get a different kind of position focused on childhood chronic diseases.
In his Nov. 3 interview with Burns, Trump declined to specify Kennedy’s future position.
“I’m not going to talk about that but he’s going to have a big role in the administration,” Trump said, when asked whether he wanted Kennedy in a Cabinet position — and whether he thought Kennedy would make it through Senate confirmation.
In an Oct. 30 interview on CNN, Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team and head of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, said that Kennedy did not want — nor would he get — the secretary of Health and Human Services position.
“Here’s what he wants to do. He said, ‘I want data,’” Lutnick said of Kennedy and vaccines. “He wants the data so he can say these things are unsafe.”
Lutnick said he had spoken with Kennedy for two and a half hours, and proceeded to recite several of Kennedy’s go-to talking points about vaccines, including the idea that vaccines are responsible for the rise in the prevalence of autism over time and that vaccines are unsafe because of a 1986 law removing product liability.
“Why do you think vaccines are safe? There’s no product liability anymore,” Lutnick said. “We all know so many more people with autism than had it when we were young.”
As we’ve written, autism diagnoses have gone up over time, but much of that is related to more awareness and changing definitions of the condition. Study after study has failed to find a link between vaccines and autism.
A 1986 law did remove most liability for vaccine makers, but this did not alter the process for reviewing the safety and efficacy of vaccines. At the time, vaccine makers were increasingly being sued for alleged harms that were later found not to be due to vaccines — with large awards threatening the vaccine supply. In recognition that vaccines are highly beneficial, but do rarely cause serious side effects, such as allergic reactions, the government stepped in and set up an alternate compensation system for people with reasonable claims of harm.
Lutnick later posted on X that he and his wife “trust our doctors” and “have vaccinated our children and ourselves,” but said “not everybody trusts such advice or the FDA.”
“We would be doing everyone a service if the government respected Bobby Kennedy’s request to make the full data available,” he added.
There is no evidence, however, that there is any data being hidden that would show vaccines are unsafe.
In an Oct. 31 episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, also spoke negatively of vaccines.
“The moment where I really started to get redpilled on the whole vax thing was, the sickest I had been in the last 15 years, by far, was when I took the vaccine,” Vance said of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Compared with other vaccines, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines tend to produce more of the temporary, expected side effects, such as pain at the injection site, fever and headache — particularly in younger people. While this can be unpleasant, it does not mean the vaccines are unsafe.
In the same Nov. 3 interview with Burns, Trump also indicated that he might go along with a Kennedy plan to stop water fluoridation in the U.S.
“Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds OK to me,” Trump said, when asked about whether he was “on board” with such a plan. “You know, it’s possible.”
The day before, Kennedy had written on X that on Trump’s first day in office, his administration “will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” The post went on to call fluoride an “industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” While high amounts of fluoride have been linked to some of these health problems, the relatively low levels of fluoride currently recommended in the U.S. generally have not. In some cases, the evidence is unclear.
Fluoride occurs naturally in some water systems. The CDC recommends that communities adjust the levels of fluoride in their water to optimal levels to prevent tooth decay, a suggestion supported by various expert groups. The CDC website states that there is “strong evidence of community water fluoridation’s safety and effectiveness.” As of 2022, around 63% of Americans received fluoridated water.
As we have written previously, there’s evidence that water fluoridation has had a positive impact on dental health. Most recently, a review study published in the Cochrane Library found that fluoridation may “lead to slightly more children being free of tooth decay,” although the addition of fluoride to toothpaste may have lessened the effects of fluoridating tap water.
Ingesting too much fluoride has a couple well-accepted harms. CDC and EPA recommendations and regulations attempt to ensure that people are exposed to only a safe level of fluoride.
High levels of fluoride exposure can lead to bone problems. To prevent these issues, the Environmental Protection Agency requires that public water systems keep fluoride levels below 4 mg per liter. Fluoride exposure during early life also can lead to dental fluorosis, a condition that typically just involves tooth discoloration. To protect against dental fluorosis, the EPA recommends a fluoride limit of 2 mg per liter. The CDC-recommended level of fluoride to improve dental health is below these limits — at 0.7 mg per liter.
Some studies — many including people exposed to water with very high levels of naturally occurring fluoride — also have indicated that exposure to fluoride during pregnancy may be associated with reduced IQ in children. As we have written, there is considerable uncertainty about whether the fluoride exposure caused the reduced IQ scores and what level of fluoride exposure might have a detrimental effect.
Experts differ on how communities should respond to this research on the potential effects of fluoride on the brain. As we’ve said, the CDC and various expert groups continue to recommend water fluoridation at optimal levels. However, some researchers have expressed concerns about the effects of fluoridation on child development.
Based on this body of work on fluoride and child brain development, anti-fluoridation groups sued the EPA. In September, a federal District Court judge ruled that the EPA must further regulate fluoride in drinking water. The judge concluded that fluoridation “poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children,” based on uncertainty about whether fluoride might affect brain development when added to water at recommended levels of 0.7 mg per liter.
Responses could range from banning fluoride in public drinking water to simply issuing a warning. The EPA has not yet said how it intends to respond.
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