White House calls humiliating loss in deep red Trump country a 'tie'

While Democrat Conor Lamb basks in the glow of his special election victory over Republican Rick Saccone, Trump’s White House is committed to pretending it was a tie.

Trump himself has been notably and blessedly silent after his desperate last-minute visit failed to help Saccone win in Pennsylvania’s 18 Congressional District.

But deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah tried to spin Trump as Saccone’s near-savior, telling reporters during a gaggle aboard Air Force One that Trump’s “engagement in the race turned what was a deficit for the Republican candidate to what is essentially a tie.”

Shah also falsely claimed that Conor Lamb “embraced the president’s policies and his vision,” echoing spin from other Republicans and conservative media figures.

In real life, however, Conor Lamb won the special election Tuesday night despite the fact that Trump carried the district by twenty points, and Lamb closed a double-digit polling lead after Trump jumped into the race.

Lamb ran against the Trump tax scam, and polls came out the weekend of Trump’s unhinged last-ditch campaign stop in Pennsylvania showing Lamb gained against the Republicans. And unlike the last losing special election candidate Trump endorsed, Rick Saccone wasn’t even an accused child molester.

The Democratic victory in Pennsylvania is just the latest in a long string of special election flips, and the first since the passage of the Trump tax scam.

With just eight months to go until the midterms, there are 119 current Republican seats that are closer than the Pennsylvania 18th District was in 2016, and with any luck, Trump will be willing to help lose as many of them as is humanly possible, too.