Donald Trump Falsely Claims He Won the Electoral College and Popular Vote by a 'Landslide'

Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2 million, making her the fifth presidential candidate to take the overall vote but not the electoral college

Donald Trump continued to defend his election victory amidst the news that Hillary Clinton‘s campaign is participating in the Wisconsin recount headed by Jill Stein of the Green Party.

On Sunday afternoon, the 70-year-old President-elect bizarrely claimed that he won the Electoral College “in a landslide” and would take the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” despite there being no evidence of illegal voting. The future 45th president did not offer up any facts or specifics for his claim that “millions” voted illegally and there has been no legitimate evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election.

According to tallies from CNN, Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2 million votes, making her the fifth presidential candidate to take the overall vote but not the Electoral College. Trump’s claim that he won the Electoral College by a “landslide” also does not hold up, as he is projected to win 290 votes to Clinton’s 232 (the winning candidate needs 270 to secure the presidency and Michigan, which has 16 electoral votes, has not yet been officially called for either candidate). For comparison’s sake, current President Barack Obama won the Electoral College by higher margins — 332 votes in 2012 and 365 in 2008.

However, Trump continued, “It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!”

Sunday’s tweetstorm from Trump was stranger still because it appeared that the President-elect was invalidating the results to the very election he won by falsely claiming that there was evidence of widespread voter fraud.

He followed up his tweets on Sunday by claiming falsely that there was “serious voter fraud” in Virginia, New Hampshire and California — all of which were called for Clinton. Again, the President-elect did not back up his claims with any facts or evidence and there have been no reported cases of major voter fraud in any of those states.

Trump released a statement in reaction to recount efforts to the media on Saturday, and wrote, “The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, ‘We must accept this result and then look to the future.’ ”

On Sunday, Trump continued to tweet about the recount efforts and brought up the Democrats’ pre-election reaction to Trump’s previous statements that he might not accept the election results if he doesn’t win.

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Green Party officials filed for a recount on Friday following reports of voting discrepancies and are seeking a deeper investigation into the election results. Wisconsin’s electoral votes went to Trump on Election Night.Stein told CNN‘s John Berman on Thursday that “there were attempts made broadly on state voter databases and we know that we have an election system that relies a computer system that is wide to open hacks.”