It’s hard to know where to start when looking at President-elect Trump’s latest Twitter tirade.
The key fact is that Trump has gone on the social media site claiming that “millions” of people voted illegally in the general 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
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
The bizarre tweet showed up after Trump learned that the Green Party was asking for a recount of votes in the key states which gave him the Electoral College victory. In typical thin skinned Trump style, he blew up on Twitter.
What is the source of Trump’s latest claim of unfairness? Setting aside the question of why the man refuses to accept the results of an election that he won, where would he get the idea that there were millions of illegal votes?
From the Alt-Right conspiracy theorists, that’s where.
It started with a guy named Gregg Phillips, who describes himself as a voter fraud specialist. He tweeted about the “illegal votes” before all of the data was even available, according to the Washington Post.
https://twitter.com/JumpVote/status/797218284034752512
Phillips announced that his group would be filing a massive lawsuit against the federal government because of the alleged illegal votes. He also started:
“asking Americans to submit video affidavits and join us in massive suit against the government over non-citizen voting.”
Although this very shaky claim of illegals voting in massive numbers was debunked by the good people at Snopes.com, among others, it was picked up by the rabid racists at InfoWars.
The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was the founder of InfoWars. This man was also behind the claims that the children slaughtered at Sandy Hook were really just paid actors and that the entire horrific event was staged. He also believes in a Jewish conspiracy to hurt America.
This is not a stable person, nor is his website a valid source for factual information.
Nevertheless, our President-elect is repeating his baseless claims. Think about that for a minute.
All of this brings up a second question.
We know that Trump’s claim of millions of illegal votes in false. We know this because we check our sources. We believe in facts.
But if Donald Trump himself does believe what he says, then he thinks the entire election was fraudulent.
In that case, the obvious response is to order a recount of the entire general election, nationwide.
I don't say #AuditTheVote because I think Hillary will win, but because POTUS-elect has now thrown the entire outcome into question. https://t.co/iMwvdNkDq7
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) November 28, 2016
#WIRecount We agree with Trump. We need a recount of every state to find those 2 million illegal voters #AuditTheVote
— Mourning For America (@SFL4Hillary) November 28, 2016
We can only hope that the President-elect understands that he cannot have it both ways.
He can’t claim massive voter fraud and then denounce recount efforts.
Even the twisted little mind of Donald Trump must understand that his two claims contradict each other.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons. Available through Creative Commons Share Alike International license 4.0
