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Lara Trump insists president must have won election because of rally crowds

<p>Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of Donald Trump listens to Rudy Giuliani speak during a news conference on legal challenges to vote counting in Pennsylvania earlier this month</p> (AP)

Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of Donald Trump listens to Rudy Giuliani speak during a news conference on legal challenges to vote counting in Pennsylvania earlier this month

(AP)

Lara Trump has echoed her husband, Eric Trump, in baselessly claiming that the size of the president’s campaign rallies illustrate that the election was rigged.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Ms Trump, who is married to the president’s middle son, cited the rallies as evidence that the election had been fraudulent.

“Well I think whenever you look at this election it's become clear to people that something is very very wrong here,” she said.

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“I think people have a hard time rationalising… how is it a guy like Joe Biden who throughout the course of his campaign could barely scrape together a dozen people at an event all of a sudden got 80 million people so inspired to vote for him.”

Joe Biden was declared winner of the 2020 presidential election by news networks on 7 November but Donald Trump has yet to concede to the president-elect, despite officially launching the transition process.

The president and his campaign team have filed lawsuits in battleground states that Mr Biden won. The Trump team has so far provided no definitive evidence of any voting irregularities.

Footage of the president’s rallies on the campaign trail showed tightly-packed crowds with limited social distancing amid the pandemic.

In contrast, Mr Biden kept a limited travel schedule and reduced in-person appearances in light of social distancing guidance.

Ms Trump added: “You contrast that with what we have seen continually throughout the entire time that Donald Trump has been in office which is that he has continued to hold rallies and those rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people.”

The comments echo similar baseless claims made by Eric Trump made on Twitter last week saying the size of the rallies illustrate that the presidential election was “rigged from the beginning.”

“Biden couldn’t get 10 people to a rally & went days without leaving his house,” Mr Trump, who made several appearances during his father’s campaign, tweeted.

“@realDonaldTrump received 11 million more votes than 2016, nearly doubled African American support - this was every stop, multiple times a day. This election was rigged from the beginning.”

Some experts warned that the rallies were not providing any “additional benefit” in expanding Mr Trump’s voting base, saying they only targeted Mr Trump’s most loyal supporters.

Others noted that holding rallies in defiance of coronavirus health recommendations has fueled some voters’ disapproval of his handling of the pandemic.

Republicans have said the rallies allow them to gather voter data from attendees and fire up their base.

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