He’s still chumming the waters with provocative rhetoric and little to no concern for the truth. Trump did not “spend a lot of time on that, but it was clear that it was still on his mind”.
Advertisement
As part of that conversation, Mr. Trump asserted that between three million and five million unauthorized immigrants voted for Mrs. Clinton.
First, voter fraud as serious as the president alleges is as important an issue as one can have about the strength, legitimacy and viability of the republic.
Trump won 306 electoral college votes to Clinton’s 227.
Congressman Dent says, “Could there have been some people who are in this country unlawfully and could have voted?” Grover Cleveland, in 1888, lost the elections to Benjamin Harrison despite acquiring popular votes.
The comment was first reported by the Washington Post. Pressed for evidence, he ultimately resorted to saying simply that Trump “believes what he believes”. And without such an investigation, it is unlikely that the number of votes cast legally or illegally will ever be known with certainty. Whether it’s his perceived coziness with the undemocratic country, or his remark (joke?) during the campaign that Russia ought to hack Clinton’s emails, the thought that the election was toyed with in his favor by Russian hackers seemed all too plausible to many.
“We talked about different electoral college, popular votes, going through the different ones.”
Unsurprisingly, he also blamed his popular vote loss on “voter fraud” in states Clinton won, again with no proof.
Trump’s fixation with this apparently started with a few tweets by Gregg Phillips, a self-described conservative voter fraud specialist, who started making claims even before data on voter history was actually available in most jurisdictions.
You could say the last presidential election was Shakespearean.
The Republican-led Senate confirmed Pompeo, a 53-year-old US Army veteran, by a vote of 66 to 32, with significant support from Democrats.
There has been no evidence of fraud or statistics relating to ballots cast by illegal immigrants. He also points to claims by Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks fame, that the source of the leaks was not Russian Federation.
Asked about Trump’s remarks about fraud robbing him of a popular-vote victory, McConnell said there are “people literally in jail in Kentucky” for voter fraud.
“This bill is bad”.
Then he made the case for why the claim is very likely not true.
Yes, it is [illegal]. “Thirty-three of 50 states voted for him”.
After which Doocy summed things up by saying: “And so that’s what is going to happen out in California”.
Advertisement
“I wasn’t there, but if the President of the United States is claiming that 3.5 million people voted illegally, that shakes confidence in our democracy – he needs to disclose why he believes that”, Graham told CNN on Tuesday.
