During a recent segment of Fox News Channel’s “The Five,” liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov downplayed President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 presidential election, claiming that he did not win the popular vote. This elicited a substantial response from conservatives on the internet, who fact-checked Tarlov on the math behind the vote totals.
Tarlov pushed back on the conservative talking point that Trump “decimated” Vice President Kamala Harris in the election. “One thing though, that I…I’m not saying that there isn’t a lot of work to do, because there absolutely is, for people who are talking about this, is if we got completely decimated, the numbers don’t bear that out,” she said.
Asserting that the president-elect did not attain fifty percent of the vote, Tarlov continued, “So Trump didn’t cross fifty percent of the popular vote, so the majority of Americans didn’t vote for him, and Senate democrats performed really well. so people like Ruben, Diego. Tammy Baldwin, Jackie Rosen and Nevada they ran seven eight points ahead of Kamala Harris, which is what was predicted, and that does show that this norm coalition can’t exist, it was that Trump had a special sauce. At the top of the ticket for a lot of people.”
The claim from Tarlov sparked a wave of fact-checks from conservatives across social media. “Again, just factually incorrect. Maybe math is not Democrats best subject? 50.37%” one person wrote in the comments section. As of writing this article, the Associated Press reported that Trump currently sits at 50 percent of the vote total, compared to Harris’ 48.3 percent along with other Libertarian, Green Party, and Independent candidates taking a fraction of a percent of the vote.
The popular conservative commentator Cillian contested Tarlov’s remarks, arguing in response to the clip, “Trump won the Popular Vote and Electoral College, and Republicans have a Majority in the House and Senate. The Democrat cope is getting embarrassing now. Your little ‘victories’ mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.”
Another user said, “He won all seven swing states the house the Senate and the White House and is at 50% popular vote, which is absolutely fantastic for Republican since it has not happened since 2004. Yes, that’s a mandate!” Similarly, someone else pointed out the report from the Associated Press, writing, “Looks like 50% to me. If she wants to count the other parties that received votes, she needs to add them to both Kamala and Trump because neither one of them had their votes. In the end, he will come out ahead, if they don’t keep flipping votes. 2 weeks in CA and they are still not finished counting.”
While it is true that President-elect Trump’s former commanding lead of the popular vote has diminished in the weeks since Election Day, as liberal states such as California are still not finished counting their vote totals, reports still put him at the fifty percent threshold. As many pointed out, this would render Tarlov incorrect in her claims.
Watch Tarlov’s disputed take on Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 election below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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