Trump: People Don Costumes to Cast Illegal Votes

President Trump asserts that Republicans are losing elections because people are donning disguises to vote illegally. Trump made the claim while discussing the Florida recount with the Daily Caller, along with his belief that Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes should be fired (more on that here, here and here). The full transcript of the interview shows the president also brought up California before making his disguise statement, so it wasn't clear which state he meant when he said this:

• "The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes, which is what I’ve been saying for a long time. I have no doubt about it. And I’ve seen it, I’ve had friends talk about it when people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on. The disgrace is that, voter ID. If you buy, you know, a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID."

The Guardian, which along with other media outlets paints the "disguises" claim as being about Florida, notes that Florida counties face a 3pm deadline Thursday to finish their machine recounts and that it's not clear all of them will be able to comply; six federal lawsuits have been filed so far over the election in the state. The New York Times reports that thousands of ballots may be disqualified due to signature mismatches, though US District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday extended a deadline on that. He gave voters whose ballots were discounted over their signatures until 5pm Saturday to show a valid ID and resolve the issue, reports the AP. He also chastised state election officials: Florida is "the laughingstock of the world election after election, and we chose not to fix this." (Trump earlier called Florida ballots "massively infected.")