Donald Trump made a peculiar comment about Pennsylvania voting “computers” during an ode to Elon Musk at his pre-inauguration rally.
During a loved-up nod to his “first buddy” before 20,000 fans at Sunday’s rally, Trump was taking swipes at Russia and China, and talking about the tech mogul getting a rocket into space.
Trump then detoured into Musk’s influence on the 2024 presidential election.
“He journeyed to Pennsylvania, where he spent a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania, and he’s a popular guy. He was very effective,” Trump said. “And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good, pretty good. So thank you to Elon.”
It’s not totally clear what Trump was talking about, especially as Pennsylvania says it doesn’t use one type of voting machine. As of June 2020, according to its official website, all 67 of the commonwealth’s counties had voting systems that produce voter-verifiable paper records and “meet 21st-century standards of security, auditability, and accessibility.”
However, during the 2024 election campaign, the software in one county suffered a high-profile malfunction. The issue in Cambria County in early November prevented voters from scanning their ballots. They were later manually counted by the Board of Elections. In the end, Trump won the state with 50.4 percent of the votes.
On X, some users were convinced that Trump’s comments were evidence of foul play. “This sounds like an affirmation that Elon stole the election for Trump,” one wrote. “Is he insinuating that they cheated?” a second person asked. “Trump confesses to cheating by letting Musk rig the voting machines. But that’s OK. Right?” another person said.
Trump’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
