Washington: President Donald Trump on Monday corrected an earlier post on social media in which he referred to Brazil’s presidential election as India’s to claim that the electoral process in the US was “corrupt”.
In a glaring factual error, Trump, in a post on Truth Social on Sunday, claimed that “125 million people voted in India’s Presidential elections and the results came out shortly after the vote closed”.
Trump then used the faster counting example to target Democratic-run cities and states such as Detroit, Philadelphia and California.
“In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other US Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate,” Trump said.
“Voting in America is CORRUPT,” Trump said, referring to the weeks taken for the counting of votes in elections in US cities and states.
Later, he corrected himself to say that “25 Million People voted today in the first round of Brazil’s Presidential Election. The results came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY!”
Brazil, not India, went to the polls on Sunday for the first round of its presidential election. The South American country recorded 125.27 million valid votes, according to its electoral authority, while results started coming in from 5 pm, when voting closed, and were updated as ballots were counted.
Brazil, alphabetically the first part of the acronym BRICS, attended a summit of the grouping in New Delhi last month and the two nations met each other in a FIFA international friendly football match in Kolkata on Saturday — though neither fact could reliably be cited to explain the mix-up by the US President who handed over the sport’s biggest prize in New Jersey in July.
India’s citizens do not directly vote for their President, who is elected by an electoral college formed by members of Parliament and state assemblies. The incumbent Droupadi Murmu assumed office in 2022.
Brazil’s election on Sunday featured incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. With neither candidate securing a majority, the two will face each other in a run-off on October 25.