Donald Tramp swapped his “Make America Great Again” hat on Sunday for some new presidential headgear — proudly sporting another red lid, this time with the number 45 stitched into the side in a not-so-subtle swipe at ongoing recount efforts.
The billionaire was spotted leaving Mar-a-Lago with his security detail around 4 p.m., less than an hour after he fired off a trio of tweets blasting Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s call for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
He wore a dark suit, a white shirt and the red hat — which also said “USA” on the front.
The number on the side is likely a nod to Trump’s forthcoming inauguration as America’s 45th president. The president-elect appeared to make a point of adjusting the hat for news cameras.
Stein’s crusade came to light Friday, when she filed a filed a recount petition in Wisconsin — claiming she had raised $5.2 million to pay for retallies there and in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton’s campaign revealed that she would join Stein’s efforts, and independent candidate Rocky Roque De La Fuente has also requested a recount.
“Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves,” Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias wrote in a post on Medium. “But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”
Trump wasn’t taking the recount efforts too kindly on Sunday afternoon, despite Stein’s claims that she was simply testing the integrity of the US voting system following the widespread claims that Russia helped sway the election.
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he seethed in a tweet at 3:30 p.m.
“It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!”
Roughly four hours later, Trump wrote: “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California — so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias — big problem!”
As of Wednesday, Trump had been declared the winner of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and held a lead of nearly 11,000 votes in Michigan, where the final results should be announced Monday.
There has so far been no evidence indicating widespread voter manipulation or hacking of any kind on Election Day.