Eric Trump lambasted for saying Trump rallies illustrate ‘rigged’ election

Donald Trump’s second son, Eric Trump, has faced criticism on Twitter for suggesting that the size of the president’s campaign 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," he added.

Mr Trump captioned the tweet alongside an image seemingly of an audience at one of the president’s rallies, showing a sea of people crowded together wearing red hats.

At the time of publication, the platform has not flagged the tweet, which has over 40,000 likes, as a disputed claim, as it has with many other inflammatory tweets suggesting the election was fraudulent.

Joe Biden was announced as the winner of the presidential election by major news outlets on 7 November. Mr Trump has yet to concede to the president-elect.

The Trump campaign has so far provided no definitive evidence of any voting irregularities.

Twitter users were quick to criticise the president’s son for the post, both for his claims about the election and for his celebration of large rallies amidst the pandemic.

“Rally turnouts don't count as votes,” one user said.

“78,764,266 people beg to differ,” another added.

“It's because one half of the country recognizes they're living through a mass death event and the other thinks it's fake,” one user posted.

“Or, Biden supporters understood there was a pandemic going on,” a user wrote.

On Sunday, Donald Trump appeared to briefly accept the results of the US election after writing on Twitter that president-elect Mr Biden had won the vote a week and a half prior.

However, an hour and a half later he lashed back out at the results and reiterated that he refused to concede.

“He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA.” he wrote. “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!," he said.

During the campaign the president faced intense criticism for continuing to hold rallies amidst the pandemic, particularly states seeing an increase in cases.

A working paper released in October suggested that the rallies during the campaign led to some 30,000 coronavirus infections and more than 700 deaths.

Footage of the rallies large tightly packed crowds with limited social distancing and many in attendance, including the president, not wearing masks drew backlash as the pandemic continued to worsen across the US.

Mr Biden kept a limited travel schedule and reduced in person appearances in light of guidance to limit the spread of the virus amidst the outbreak.

Some experts warned that the rallies were not providing any “additional benefit” in expanding the Republican candidate’s voter base.

“The rapid-fire Trump rallies, while clearly well-received by the base, have done nothing to tip the scale in President Trump’s direction,” Tim Malloy, a pollster from Quinnipiac University, told Bloomberg in October.

Large rallies were a hallmark of the president’s campaign in 2016, and Donald Trump relied on packed rallies for both media attention and a surrogate for more in-person events in 2020.

At the time, Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign told Bloomberg that “the rally has always been, and is, an important part of the campaign.”