The media have declared that Joe Biden is the next President of the United States.
They made this claim in spite of the fact that this race is not yet over, and that widespread evidence of voter fraud is popping up throughout the country.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley called this out on Twitter.
Hawley tweeted “The media do not get to determine who the president is. The people do”
This is absolutely correct of course.
The media has been lying to the American public for years, and for this they have lost all credibility.
As has been reported, the media has determined that Joe Biden has won.
ABC News has more on the media's premature call of Biden's alleged victory:
With a fifth day of vote counting testing the nation's patience, news organizations on Saturday moved swiftly following a crucial release of data from Pennsylvania to declare Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election.
CNN made its call at 11:24 a.m. Eastern, and was followed within two minutes by The Associated Press, NBC, CBS and ABC. Fox News called the race at 11:40.
Because votes are counted state by state, verdicts by the media outlets' decision desks serve as the unofficial finish line for the presidential race. The dramatic changes in how people voted this year, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the challenges that created for tallying ballots, complicated the process.
The closeness of the race in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina proved another challenge.
“We just have to be certain before we call a winner in the presidential election,” said Sally Buzbee, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP.
Heading into Saturday, CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC — which coordinate their vote counts and exit polls — had Biden at 253 electoral votes. Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes would put him above the 270 needed to win. The AP and Fox News, which share election data, each had Biden at 264 electoral votes because they had called Arizona for the former vice president earlier in the week.
A methodical count of mail-in ballots from Pennsylvania erased an earlier Trump lead there. On Saturday morning, Biden's margin in that state exceeded 34,000 and above the level that triggers a mandatory recount, and the news organizations concluded simultaneously that the lead was too big for Trump to erase.
AP reporters investigated the composition of yet-to-be counted provisional ballots and also determined they wouldn't be enough to help Trump win, Buzbee said. Voters cast a provisional ballot if there is some question about their eligibility, for instance, if they had turned up at the wrong polling place.
“This marks the end of what might be America's most uncommon presidency,” ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos said.
Hawley is not alone in recognizing that the media has gotten this wrong before.
Senator Hawley himself has already vowed to introduce legislation that would protect the integrity of our elections.
More on that from Fox News:
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Thursday that he would introduce election integrity legislation, noting that confusion surrounding the 2020 presidential election warranted the need for reform.
"If last 24 hrs have made anything clear, it’s that we need new election integrity laws NOW," he tweeted. "Ban ballot harvesting, guarantee poll watcher access, make ballot counting transparent. I will introduce."
Hawley's tweets came amid an uproar from President Trump and his campaign over voting methods and how ballots were counted in Tuesday's election. The tight margins in the 2020 presidential election have caused Trump to claim instances potential fraud or error in ballot counts, although no such claims have been substantiated.
Republicans, throughout the election season, have raised concerns about aggregating ballots through "ballot harvesting," as well as the way Republican poll watchers were allegedly deterred at election sites.
Two days after Election Day, neither candidate had amassed the votes needed to win the White House. But Biden’s victories in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, according to the Fox News Decision Desk, meaning he was one battleground state away from becoming president-elect.
As results poured in, Republicans and the Trump campaign filed lawsuits in several states. Judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly dismissed Trump campaign lawsuits there on Thursday.
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