Donald Trump takes to Twitter to bombard supporters with a new conspiracy: that he lost the popular vote because of voter fraud.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Sunday that he had fallen short in the popular vote in the general election only because millions of people had voted illegally, leveling the baseless claim as part of a daylong storm of Twitter posts voicing anger about a three-state recount push.
“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,” Mr. Trump wrote Sunday afternoon.
The New York Times, Nov. 27, 2016
Trump repeats the conspiracy four days after he enters the White House and continues it throughout his presidency, even though his lawyers say he’s wrong.
Voting officials in both parties across the country said the answer to those questions is already clear: Fraudulent voting happens in tiny, sporadic episodes that have no impact on the outcome of elections. It is virtually impossible, several state election officials said, that millions of people voted illegally in last year’s presidential contest.
In fact, that was the conclusion of Mr. Trump’s own lawyers last year as they sought to stop recount efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote in their response to recount petitions by Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate.
The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2017
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/us/politics/trump-adviser-steps-up-searing-attack-on-romney.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/trump-voting-fraud-false-claim-investigation.html?searchResultPosition=105
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