They say you should always win gracefully. But in the 2020 presidential election, it’s pretty hard to do that when the losers are so sore they keep trying to invalidate the legally cast votes of 75 million Americans. So what’s the harm of a few prank calls to Trump’s voter fraud hotline?
Early on Saturday, Nov. 6, every major news outlet named Joe Biden the projected winner of the 2020 presidential race. Later that night, the presumptive President-elect and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris delivered their victory speeches, as is normal once a candidate takes a substantial lead after the vast majority of votes are counted.
Yet on his end, soon-to-be-former President Trump still refuses to follow normal protocol for the legitimate Biden-Harris win. Despite absolutely zero substantiated evidence of widespread voter fraud, which experts determined have not been a cause for concern either historically or in the current 2020 election, the Trump camp barreled on with its months-long false narrative around “illegal” votes. They’ve filed several baseless lawsuits in an attempt to further suppress and cast doubt on the aforementioned millions of legal votes, though curiously only in states where he lost.
So, with all that in mind, it’s tough to sympathize with the sources now belly-aching to ABC News about folks calling Trump’s joke of a voter fraud hotline (that number, in case you were wondering, is 1-888-503-3526) with their own jokes. After all, if you’re going to act like a clown, then expect to get clowned right back.
Though, unlike the Eric Trump tweet claiming that the calls are led by Democratic operatives, all evidence points to the spammers being predominantly everyday Americans. Organized only by social media and the desire to have one last good laugh at the Trump campaign’s expense, several semi-viral posts online show the real faces of these pranksters. (The Trump campaign denied ABC News’ request for comment on the prank calls.)
On Saturday, one man urged everyone on Twitter to definitely not call Trump’s voter fraud hotline (again for posterity, that number is 1-888-503-3526) only to play the losing sound from The Price Is Right whenever someone picked up.
The ABC journalist also reported that the trend was spreading to TikTok, through app users who were previously credited with pulling off a similar prank on the Trump campaign’s Tulsa rally by getting them to wildly overestimate attendance numbers.
Prank calling the Trump campaign voter fraud hotline is (predictably) becoming another TikTok trend to troll the president’s team: https://t.co/p28WDmtwPC
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) November 8, 2020
More guerilla-level pranking of the hotline (which, again, can be reached at 1-888-503-3526) saw one woman explaining to an operator that she was calling to report a Michigan polling station that did not allow her to vote for Trump twice.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to vote twice,” the operator responded, with all the expertise of someone qualified to sniff out any attempted voter fraud.
The cherry on top of the fiasco came from Alex Hirsch, creator of the beloved Disney Channel animated series Gravity Falls, who decided to jump in on the fun. He first tweeted a recording of himself calling in to report suspicions of the McDonald’s Hamburglar (aka Antifa) committing voter fraud for Joe Biden.
Soon after, Hirsch uploaded a video of him calling in as fan-favorite character Grunkle Stan, proudly reporting himself as a local hero for taking ballots in a big sack and demanding to speak with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Guliani. After realizing it was yet another prank call, the exhausted attendant responded with a less-than-convincing, “Oh, great.”
Despite its chaos and apparent failure to report back even a single legitimate claim of voter fraud, we think Trump’s hotline is actually winning, by a lot. Some people are even saying it’s the best hotline we’ve ever had, just huge — an absolutely perfect, beautiful voter fraud hotline for an absolutely perfect, beautiful president.
UPDATE: Nov. 8, 2020, 5 p.m. EST An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified ‘Gravity Falls’ as a Cartoon Network series. In fact, it is a Disney Channel series. We apologize for the error.