“An interview that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) gave to Jimmy Fallon last month is going viral because of Sanders’ prescient prediction of how President Donald Trump would act on election night. Sanders noted to “The Tonight Show” host Fallon on Oct. 23 that studies showed Democrats are “more likely to use mail-in ballots” and Republicans to walk into polling booths on Election Day. Sanders said it would likely be “the first votes that will be counted will be those people who came in on Election Day, which will be Republican.” Sanders predicted how Trump could attempt to use this to his advantage: It could well be that at 10 o’clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan, he’s winning in Pennsylvania, he’s winning in Wisconsin, and he gets on the television and he says, ‘Thank you, Americans, for reelecting me. It’s all over. Have a good day.’ But then, the next day, and the day following, all of those mail-in ballots start getting counted, and it turns out that Biden has won those states, at which point Trump says, ‘See? I told you the whole thing was fraudulent. I told you those mail-in ballots were crooked. And we’re not going to leave office.’ So that is a worry that I and a lot of people have. Trump didn’t make his declaration at 10 p.m. Tuesday — but he did use a press conference in the White House in the early hours of Wednesday to falsely claim victory over Democratic nominee Joe Biden, even though millions of votes remain uncounted and no reputable organization called the winner of the election. “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said. “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. It’s a very sad moment. We will win this, and as far as I’m concerned we already have won.” Sanders’ prediction has now been seen more than 7 million times on Twitter: thinking about this video of bernie sanders talking about mail-in votes pic.twitter.com/b6WpiIlwcs— hannah (@hannahhycho) November 4, 2020 Check out Sanders’ full interview with Fallon here.
