President Trump Continues To Claim That ‘Millions’ Cast Illegal Votes In Election
Despite the lack of evidence, Donald Trump continues to claim that there were 'millions' of illegal votes cast in 2016.
Donald Trump continues to insist that the 2016 General Election was tainted by voter fraud, specifically claiming that ‘millions’ of illegal immigrants were able to vote, despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim:
WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first official meeting with congressional leaders on Monday to falsely claim that millions of unauthorized immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority, a return to his obsession with the election’s results even as he seeks support for his legislative agenda.
The claim, which he has made before on Twitter, has been judged untrue by numerous fact-checkers. The new president’s willingness to bring it up at a White House reception in the State Dining Room is an indication that he continues to dwell on the implications of his popular vote loss even after assuming power.
Mr. Trump appears to remain concerned that the public will view his victory — and his entire presidency — as illegitimate if he does not repeatedly challenge the idea that Americans were deeply divided about sending him to the White House to succeed President Barack Obama.
Mr. Trump received 304 electoral votes to capture the White House, but he fell almost three million votes short of Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. That reality appears to have bothered him since Election Day, prompting him to repeatedly complain that adversaries were trying to undermine him.
Moving into the White House appears not to have tempered that anxiety. Several people familiar with the closed-door meeting Monday night, who asked to remain anonymous in discussing a private conversation, said Mr. Trump used the opportunity to brag about his victory.
As part of that conversation, Mr. Trump asserted that between three million and five million unauthorized immigrants voted for Mrs. Clinton. That is similar to a Twitter message he posted in late November that said he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
Voting officials across the country have said there is virtually no evidence of people voting illegally, and certainly not millions of them. White House officials did not respond to requests for a comment on Mr. Trump’s discussion of the issue.
Trump’s claims about voter fraud in the election aren’t new, of course. Republican advocates for strict Voter ID laws have made similar claims about voting fraud in order to justify the laws that they support even when they clearly have a disproportionate impact on minority and poor voters, or when the identification requirements result in people who have voting for decades and who are clearly American citizens being denied the right to vote. As I’ve noted before, though, there is little to no evidence to support the contention that in-person voter fraud is a major problem, least of all that it amounts to a situation where ‘millions’ of people are voting illegally. Of course, there are other forms of potential voter fraud that could occur, including fraudulent registration and fraud involving the use of absentee ballots, but Voter ID laws generally can’t catch that kind of fraud and there is little evidence to suggest that it occurs on a massive scale in any case. Indeed, the facts surrounding last November’s election make it clear that there is quite simply no evidence to support the President’s contention that there were millions of illegal votes placed on Election Day whether one is talking about in-person voter fraud or seemingly legal votes cast by people who are not legally eligible to vote, this despite the fact that there have been many efforts by both supporters of Voter ID laws and independent scholars to determine if such fraud can be detected. What’s ironic in the President’s case, of course, is the fact that his
What’s ironic in the President’s case, of course, is the fact that his claims about massive voter fraud threaten to undermine the legitimacy of his own win in the Electoral College. As I’ve noted before, the entirety of the President’s victory in the Electoral College could be wiped out if he had not won in three states where his combined margin of victory amounted to less than 80,000 votes, specifically Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Assuming for the sake of argument that there were millions of illegal votes cast in November, that logically brings up the question of how many of the votes cast for President Trump were illegally cast. If even a small percentage of these illegal votes were cast for President Trump in the states that he won, then that calls his win into as much doubt as it would Hillary Clinton’s win in the popular vote column. Unless you believe that all of these allegedly illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton, which is unlikely, then it’s clear that Trump is undermining the legitimacy of his own win just as much as he thinks he is undermining Clinton’s lead on the popular vote side.
What’s more concerning, of course, is the fact that Trump’s claims are a direct attack on the legitimacy of democratic government itself:
There is no benign explanation for President Trump’s false assertion that millions of people voted illegally in the last election. It is either a deliberate attempt to undermine faith in the democratic process, an exhortation to those who favor new restrictions on access to the ballot box or the worrisome trait of someone with immense power willing to make wild statements without any credible evidence.
By repeating as president what he had said as a candidate, for whatever purpose, Trump is now striking at the foundation of a democratic society. This is yet another example of Trump being willing to cast doubt on information, individuals or institutions that he believes threaten his legitimacy, challenge his authority or question his actions, from attacks on “phony polls” or the “dishonest media” to assertions now of vast voter fraud.
(…)
This is not a debate about the size of the crowd at last week’s presidential inauguration. That is a piddling controversy compared to his claim that the election system overseen by the states is somehow riddled with fraud. Trump is chipping away at a shared public confidence in a system that is fundamental to a representative government for no apparent reason other than that he’s bothered by the fact that, although duly elected and now in the White House, he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million votes.
Early Wednesday, the president tweeted that he would ask for a “major investigation” into voter fraud. But it is far from clear what the scope of this possible investigation would be, what Trump’s real intentions are in calling for it (though he suggested strengthening voting procedures as a possible goal) or who would conduct it. Everyone should wait to hear more. The president has preferred his own version of what happened in November in the popular vote, even if that damages the very system of government atop which he now sits.
The next move is now his.
Given how the President has acted since he stepped into the Presidential election in June 2015, I doubt this will end well.
Trump is clearly un-hinged and unable to perform the duties of the office.
If you cannot accept facts, then what happens when there is a real crisis? How does he operate in the situation room with no grasp on reality? Will he be like the sycophants who comment here, and have to stand-by and wait for Fox News to tell him what to think?
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/01/24/donald-trump-threatens-send-feds-chicago-response-bill-o-reilly-segment/215115
Amendment 25, Article 4…Let’s get this buffoon out of office before he does real harm.
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/823708868966547456
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/824025272643186688
Well, I expected this from a narcissist con man CEO autocrat like Trump.
However, this is shaping up to be a very big test for our important media sources, such as: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the New York Times, Washington Post and various other media and cable news operations. Are they going to roll over and “objectively” report that, “Trump says ….” or “Trump claims …” and leave it to viewers and readers to decide if it’s true or not, or …. are they going to aggressively and without fear fact-check his baseless claims and report what is actually true.
The point is that Trump has convinced himself that all of those 3 million votes by which Clinton won were cast by illegals, because he needs to believe that fraud/cheating is the only way she could have won.
This is a textbook illustration of his psychosis.
@al-Alameda: I believe the NYT headline yesterday specifically called it a lie; this is a good start.
While Trump’s motivations for making this claim are self-evident, this is anything but a benign lie (like, say, his claim that the Trump Steaks are still on the market). For one thing, he and other Republicans will be using this claim and similar claims as a pretext to pass laws that make it harder for the poor to vote.
There is another disturbing aspect to this, however. Imagine what happens if he runs for reelection and loses narrowly. Given his absolute refusal to ever admit the possibility of defeat of any kind (he repeatedly questioned his losses in the primaries to Ted Cruz, he implied a preemptive refusal to acknowledge defeat to Hillary Clinton, and now he’s refusing to accept the facts of his popular-vote defeat even in an election he won), is it at all out of the realm of possibility that he could refuse to relinquish power?
I know that raising this scenario makes me sound very Tinfoil Hat (the WND crowd have been saying similar stuff about Obama for years), but I really don’t think it’s altogether implausible given what we know of this man.
I suspect Trump doesn’t believe it himself, he just finds it convenient to say its true. That is, I suspect he’s outright lying.
Some of his followers however seem to really believe it. Others don’t, I note – if you go to conservative sites like National Review you’ll find more people saying its not true than those saying its true.
Its definitely an incredibly silly claim.
@george:
I’d dispute that Trump knows he’s lying. I think that he absolutely believes his own fantasies, because those fantasies are the foundation of his very existence. If he’s not the biggest and the best, he’s nothing.
Remember his initial claim that he won the electoral vote by the biggest landslide in history? That’s demonstrably untrue. But so what? He believes it, and so do his crazed fans.
Steve Bannon is registered to vote in two states. The comedy just doesn’t stop.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/steve-bannon-is-registered-to-vote-in-two-states.html
President Trump will be launching a major investigation on NASA and the money being spent on Mars exporation.
The President is convinced based on evidence he has seen that life on Mars is possible.
He sites this as an example: https://goo.gl/vH841u
.
(Fake News… not just for FOX anymore!)
@george:
Well, t7 of my siblings, and most of my extended family, voted for Trump, and all of them believe that Trump is right about this. Most of them live in California, some in Texas and Arkansas, and they absolutely believe that illegal immigrants are voting in record numbers. They are not persuaded by any information to the contrary, certainly not from the so-called ‘mainstream media.’
@CSK: With regard to the question of whether or to what extent Trump knowingly states false things, one of the most insightful pieces I have seen is this one:
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/9/29/13086236/trump-beliefs-category-error
@Pch101:
In view of this, I can envision Ivanka and Jared frantically trying to convince Dear Old Psycho Dad to let the whole matter drop quietly.
@C. Clavin:
Agreed, but this is not where the real problem lies. The real problem is with us, the electorate.
It seems to me if you want to know where the heart of America is at, you need only look to the 2016 Senate results. We know the House has been gerrymandered out of existence and that Trump lost the popular vote, but 2016 was supposed to be the Democrats year to take back the Senate.
Voters knew what republicans stood for- they made it clear they would go after Planned Parenthood and women and LGBT rights. They were absolutely clear, for six years on the trot, that should they gain control of the House, Senate and Presidency they would repeal the ACA. That they would gut the EPA and embolden climate deniers was also a given, and that immigrants too would be under the chopping block, as would any refugees fleeing countries torn apart as a result of our disastrous war in Iraq.
The voters knew all this and voted for them. They knew public schools would be threatened and services for low income/working poor families would be under attack. That’s what a majority of the country wants, that’s its heart- mean, uncaring, brutal, and beating stronger than ever.
@CSK:
Trump is a sociopath in the clinical sense. If you were to go through a checklist of sociopathic traits, then he pretty much hits every point.
Whether or not he knows that he’s lying is unclear, but sociopaths lie reflexively and will never admit the lie. The “alternative facts” quip is exactly the sort of rhetoric that you would expect to hear from a sociopath.
If this were only Trump, it would be very bad. But remember, this is today’s Republican Party. This is what they promote. This is what they tell their people. And the ones that don’t actively promote sit in silence when the crazies around them, in Congress or in their districts, froth at the mouth about stuff like this.
For far too many years the sane Republican voter ineffectually tried to vote for the “best” Republican candidate in an attempt to square their party loyalty with their loyalty to their country. By closing their eyes to what the Republican Party had become, they ultimately chose loyalty to their “team” over doing what was right. But there are no teams in politics. Only a fool hires an accountant or a brain surgeon based on anything other than their ability to do the job. And so these party loyalists betrayed their own values by believing that the Republicans were their guys and they owed them something because… well I can’t even imagine what that “because” could be, but there were an awful lot he felt that way.
More Evidence then
Russian Hacked the Election.
Russian’s have video of Trump with Hookers and other info compromising him.
Russian’s have met with Trump’s lawyer.
Russia did the DNC/ Podesta hacks.
“Is there foreign interference in our elections? You bet.
True The Vote Supports Trump’s Claim on Illegal Voters
Of course Doug does not like or mention True The Vote since they got their lawsuit against the IRS reinstated,.
@Kylopod:
Interesting piece. I think most of us have long since come to that conclusion: Trump has no beliefs nor convictions. He simply says whatever he thinks will get him what he wants at any given moment.
@Paul L.:
Your president is a liar, and you are a toady for a liar.
There is ZERO evidence of serious voter fraud. ZERO. None. Nada. Does not exist. Is not real. There is more evidence for the existence of leprechauns.
The rest of your post is the usual Trumpian effort to yell, “Squirrel!”
It will not work except on deeply stupid people. Take that however you like. But voter fraud is a LIE. A big, fat, orange lie.
@CSK:
That is the most optimistic interpretation. Far more troubling to consider that he actually believes it.
A lot of people, in areas outside their own areas of expertise, tend to believe whatever the last person who seemed authoritative said about something. Imagine a man with no areas of expertise, who has surrounded himself with sycophants who look authoritative but who are conspiracy theory nuts… now, add in a massive ego, a need to be always “winning” (and thenrefusal to ever admit he’s wrong).
Also, he has tiny hands.
@Paul L.:
You are:
1). Suggesting the abridgment of the 1st Amendment; that political speech that doesn’t agree with your ideology is not allowed.
2). Suggesting that this man’s opinion (whoever that quack is) is more credible than the entire US Intelligence community.
Next you’ll be saying that Global Warming is a hoax.
Simple question; why do you hate America so much?
This isn’t either/or, it’s “all of the above.”
I think the primary focus will be creating a pretext for further suppression of minority votes, but the Trump/Putin axis also gains from undermining faith in democracy. And we all know Trump’s severe allergy to anything resembling evidence.
@al-Alameda:
We should add “the media” to the heap of institutions that won’t save us from Trump.
Also, I want to post something I saw from Freddie Deboer:
@Gustopher:
To a sociopath, truth is irrelevant.
The issue of whether Trump knows that he’s lying isn’t quite relevant. Truth simply plays no role in how Trump leads his life. He has a story and he’s going to stick to it.
You are being lied too. You thought Hillary was going to win easily. Read real news and you might get things right.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/01/university-study-claims-2-8-million-non-citizens-voted-2008-large-enough-change-meaningful-election-outcomes/
The authors hate for Trump clouds everything. Take a step back and become a real reporter.
You hate Trump more than you love the truth. Sad
I believe there was massive voter fraud. It occurred in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, all run by corrupt Republican Governors. It is clear that Trump’s election was fraudulent and he is illegitimate.
My evidence? The same as Trump’s evidence.
See how easy this is?
@Gustopher:
I meant “beliefs and convictions” in the sense of an identifiable ideology or philosophy of governance. Trump certainly has beliefs as they pertain to or enhance his grotesquely inflated image of himself.
@Daryl:
You do realize, I hope, that even sane Republicans and conservatives regard–with very good reason–The Gateway Pundit as Planet of the Hysterical Paranoid Crackpots. For Gawd’s sake, man, it’s a half-step up in credibility from Infowars.
@Daryl:
.
The Harvard professor who manages the data used in that Old Dominion study you link to said the data was misused and the study’s conclusions are wrong. So who’s being lied to? Do you understand what data, and wrong, mean?
But keep at it Daryl. Next thing you’ll be telling us that you were in Jersey City, N.J., and watched while thousands and thousands of muslims were cheering as the World Trade Center collapsed.
She did…by 3 million votes…pretty much exactly as the polls suggested.
Indeed….how about you go first?
@Daryl:
Shut up…you are embarrassing the family.
@Daryl:
You do realize that if claims like that are true, that it calls into question the validation of the election and Trump’s victory? For such *massive* fraud to have existed, it would necessitate heavy scrutiny on a state-by-state level to make absolutely *sure* the president is elected legitimately? Trump & Toadies claim they are very very sure he won but are very very sure supposedly small states worth of people cheating *doesn’t* make that iffy?
You are also assuming all those “votes” from “illegals” were for Hillary and yet somehow it (a) didn’t turn the tide and (b) were only in safely blue states? If someone were to perpetrate fraud on that kind of scale, wouldn’t they do it in RED or PURPLE states so they could, you know, WIN? Why not in WY, MD, WI or PA? What possible gain would have come from more votes in a solid blue state like CA or NH as Trump is claiming?
Tl;dr you’re a useful idiot. Exercise your brain; it will thank you for the needed oxygen.
It’s interesting how many Trump supporters that used to come here are in hiding. The cleverer ones have sensed that they’ll be on the losing side of every argument. They know Trump is indefensible. So we’re down now to the real intellectual bottom feeders, people who don’t even pretend to be in touch with reality.
@Daryl:
There is ZERO evidence. Not scant, not slight: ZERO.
All presidential elections in this country are held at the state level, overseen by Secretaries of State. Most of those Secretaries of State are Republicans, and NOT ONE supports Trump’s lies.
So one of two things is true: !) You are either incapable of complex thought, or 2) You are a deliberate, aware liar.
Josh Marshall has a good primer on voting fraud and how it does not exist on the scale Trump is discussing:
“As we’ve also discussed at length, this entire obsession is rooted in the desire to make voting harder and suppress the vote of Democrats, minorities and the poor. But for the moment, I want to keep to the specifics about the claims themselves. Even to say ‘there’s no evidence’ for Trump’s claims is a cop-out. There’s also no evidence that Godzilla or King Kong exists. But we’re less tentative about saying someone’s either crazy or a liar if they say otherwise.”
(snip)
“If you think about it, there’s a good reason why: it is a wildly inefficient way to shift elections or accomplish anything. To operate at scale, a substantial number of people have to commit serious felonies and thus risk serious jail time, coordinate fake identities, identify people who will actually cast the ballots, etc. Conspiracies at scale are hard to keep secret. It’s far more efficient just to find eligible voters to vote. It’s true that one person could fraudulently register under five different names for five different precincts and then vote in each on election day. But if you consider the incentives – major felonies and jail time risked for a totally inconsequential effect on an election – you can see why this simply doesn’t happen. Indeed, hypotheticals aren’t the point. The key is the evidence. It’s not just numerous studies demonstrating the virtual non-existence of voter impersonation fraud. We have numerous cases of elected officials launching probes trying to find evidence of voter fraud to further political agendas and finding nothing. The evidence tells the story: voter impersonation fraud is close to non-existent in contemporary America.”
Funny you were so wrong regarding the election because of what you read . Same sources again you will be wrong again. Trump is our President
@Daryl:
Idiot or paid troll spreading lies for Putin and/or Trump. Pick one.
The more you people do this, the less effective you are, because you are denying reality and being called on it. So go tell Vladimir that we are Americans, not Russians, and we don’t fall to our knees when we see a self-appointed strongman.
@michael reynolds:
Yawn
This is great. I never thought that I would see a demand for “real news” and a link to the Gateway Pundit in the same sentence.
The internet is great for comedy, although the comedy is often unintentional.
Well at least the stock market is kicking arse.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/dow-soars-past-20-000-milestone-as-greed-trumps-fear.html
The environment is going to go to shit, workers are going to get killed in unsafe conditions, and people who aren’t young and healthy won’t be able to get insurance…but as I have said before; I’m a straight white guy in the 96th percentile of income, I’ll be fine under Trump. The people who voted for him, like Daryl…not so much.
Between this and the inauguration crowd size stuff, I feel like he’s just trying to distract people from the nasty stuff he’s actually doing to the environment and women’s rights and everything else. However, some commenters here are correct to note that this particular obsession may spell more bad news for our democracy.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
They are really sticking it to the elites!
@Daryl:
Yeah…we were so wrong that Trump is still lying about it…and you are still giving him a rim-job.
How’s it taste?
Meanwhile…while Trump obsesses over his legitimacy Red States are begging for some welfare:
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/25/im-begging-fema-for-boots-on-the-ground-donald-trump-leaves-gop-leaders-begging-for-aid-after-deadly-storms-in-the-south/
Off topic, but … WOW.
This guy just does not care at all how it must look… The price for Presidential Access just went up to $200,000. Per person.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mar-a-lago-doubles-membership-fee-to-200000-2017-1
@Kylopod: I don’t think that’s much of a threat. Vlad’s Lad is a physical coward and there could be someone around him who might drop a gentle reminder that one man with a bullet could remove him from the White House. It’s dreadful that this might even be possible, but that’s our world today.
@KM:
You need to remember that the only people who believe Trump’s idiotic lies are not really not smart enough to have thought this through.
@Daryl:
Translation: “I’ve got nothing. I believe Trump because … Hillary.”
@michael reynolds:
You overlook that Hillary’s popular vote VICTORY!! of 3+ million votes came wholly from California.
Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
And I bet you’re not blowing it all on oxycontin and cigarettes
@Liberal Capitalist:
Yes .. but … but … “#crookedHillary” gave paid speeches (about $225,000 per) to the ever-so-hated-and-evil Goldman Sachs. Trump cleared that problem, he brought many Goldman Sachs associates into his administration.
Trump does not care, and frankly neither do most Republicans because they are now in the process of running the table.
@michael reynolds:
Worse, Darrell forgets Trump previously denying any voter fraud.
WHAT you say? Trump’s own legal team has stated in legal filings that there is no voter fraud:
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-attorneys-said-no-evidence-voter-fraud-2017-1
So, it appears that there WERE illegal votes… if it benefits trumps story today… but NONE if it does not back in November 2016.
It’s Schrodinger’s ballot box.
@Paul L.:
Which is not an answer, just another transparently stupid lie.
Who is paying you to make an ass of yourself this way? Tell me you’re not doing it for free.
@Paul L.:
Interesting that you, like Trump, have no facts to support the claim that millions of illegal votes were cast in California. And, of course, you never will.
I think it is far more noteworthy that Republican legislatures across the country enacted voter suppression laws in many states and that probably had more to do with Trump “winning” than did the non-existence of millions of illegal votes in California.
By the way, why are Trump supporters so angry about their Electoral College victory? Are they really that insecure about questions and concerns with respect to legitimacy?
@al-Alameda:
@michael reynolds:
So
Hillary’s popular vote VICTORY!! of 3+ million votes did not come wholly from California?
Or the Democrats do not control California?
Or California is not corrupt when the State AG (now US Senator) Kamala Harris did nothing to punish a prosecutor who committed misconduct by altering a interrogation transcript to include a confession.
@Paul L.:
That’s not evidence of anything. So from everything posted so far, we have to conclude Paul L is a liar.
Tell your friends…Paul L is a dishonest person, seeking to harm the United States of America by promoting lies.
@Paul L.:
He overlooked it because it’s a nonsensical claim.
@Paul L.:
If Trump hadn’t received votes from Texas, then his popular vote defeat would have been even larger.
If you would like to sue your public school educators for malpractice, then I will happily testify on your behalf, as the school system obviously failed you.
@Paul L.:
Really? You need me to point out what bullshit you’re spouting?
How in the fwck would that happen, genius? Did zero people in Florida vote for her? Did she get zero votes in New York? Zero votes on every other state? Are they not part of her vote total? Duh?
Duuuuuuuuuh?
The total of votes comes from 50 states plus the DC, it is therefore asinine, absurd, silly and utterly imbecilic to insist that they all came from California. Jesus H. Christ, dude, are you trying out for Sean Spicer’s job as blank-faced liar for the Liar in Chief? Do you have no integrity at all?
@David M:
Whit… Paul could just be … misinformed.
He may have simply confused the studies that say that American’s often do not cancel one voter registration before doing another when they move state to state… or even district to district.
Or the fact that grieved loved ones do not immediately contact the local voter’s registration office when a family member passes, potentially leaving thousands of ineligible voters on the polls.
However, acknowledging that both of these things happen, as Americans do not want the government to track every small detail of their lives… does in no way mean that millions of illegal aliens voted.
If Paul still believes that this is the case, then PLEASE Paul, show us proof where at least 1000 illegal aliens voted.
We would love to share the actual factual data that you purport to be true.
We will wait.
Go on.
@Paul L.:
Seriously, get help.
@David M:
Already been called a liar by progressives like you because I do not believe the accusers in the Duke Lacrosse Rape and UVA Gang Rape cases.
BECAUSE SOMETHING MUST HAVE HAPPENED IN THOSE CASES!!!1!
I’m curious if any of the Pravda employees going on about voter fraud care to address the following questions.
1. Why rig the vote in California?
2. If there were over 3 million illegal votes in California, wouldn’t that show up in the turnout %?
3. This is kind of a big story. There are Republicans in California. Seems like allowing 3 million people to vote illegally would leave some kind of trail. And yet there isn’t any evidence…why not?
@Paul L.:
More scat-throwing. More dishonesty. More evasions.
Pathetic. You degrade yourself, sir. You earn a sad mixture of contempt and pity.
@David M:
Not to mention that with 11 million undocumented to have 3 million illegal votes in CA would indicate something better than 100% turn-out from illegals.
But facts no longer matter to these brainwashed Trump/Putin zombies. They’ve got one foot in a David Koresh compound.
And while the circus goes on, China quietly steps center stage.
What I’m hoping is that we’ll have another Sputnik-like event.
@Paul L.:
Whoa. I had no idea the people involved in those rape cases now ran the elections in California. That changes everything.
@David M:
Why would you send 3 million voters to CA when she won CA by 4.3 million votes…you would have only been padding her win? There is absolutely no logic to it.
But I will say this; if there were 3-5 million fraudulent votes cast and no one can tell us where or by who…then we need to have a “do-over”.
I guaran-fwcking-tee you that given the performance of Trump over the past couple days….even I could win that race. I’m sensing a lot of buyers remorse with everyone but the true sycophants.
@grumpy realist:
Hey Grumpy…did you see this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/01/24/are-scientists-going-to-march-on-washington/?utm_term=.7e37d750c4bd
@Paul L.:
Let me explain how, well, numbers work. (Surprising that one would have to do that, but it’s Trump’s America.)
When someone in a national campaign has a national win margin of 3 million votes, then every vote from all states goes into that vote tally. If Hillary had received 500,000 less votes in Florida, her vote lead would be 2.5 million. If she had 1 million more votes in Texas, her national lead would’ve been 4 million.
Do I need to go through and change all multisyllabic…er…complicat…er…do I need to go through and change all the big words to small words, or do you
understandget it now?@Pch101:
@michael reynolds:
Give @Paul L.: a break…he read it at a right-wing click-bait site, and he dutifully repeated it. You do not have to be smart, or capable of complex thought, or even original thought, to be an American. He is entitled to copy and paste idiocy from wherever he chooses. I will defend that right. I will laugh at him. Ridicule him. But defend him.
@Paul L.:
Aww. Does Snowflake need a safe space, or would a trigger warning suffice?
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
I’m willing to help Paul with his malpractice lawsuit against the school district.
That could make him a wealthy man, so Paul should love me.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
Because CA makes it easy for Illegal Aliens to vote.
I could have just stayed in the Right Wing echo chamber. It is when people go to other echo chambers when Snowflakes call for safe spaces and trigger warnings.
@Paul L.:
??? WTF ???
You do realize that this makes no sense whatsoever?
@James Pearce: Freddie deBoer? Mr “I can’t soil my precious soul by voting for a woman who does not match my lofty ideals of liberalism even knowing that her opponent will destroy everything I claim to care about?”
I understand a lot more about your posts than I did yesterday…
Mary Tyler Moore, a huge boyhood crush of mine, is dead at 80.
RIP…
Very OT, but Mary Tyler Moore has died.
@grumpy realist:
Like I said in an earlier thread, the American Century ended last Friday. Republicans killed it.
@Paul L.:
Paul,
As I requested earlier, we are still waiting for a documented example of at least 1000 illegal aliens voting that can begin to support your supposition of millions of illegals voting.
But now, we must also ask you what statute in California allows non-citizens to vote in national presidential elections.
Please provide evidence of both.
Please also realize that us asking for you to provide facts to back up your points of contention is following US legal customs. The burden of proof is always on the accuser, not the accused.
As you point out, staying in a right-wing-echo-chamber does not require you to possess critical reasoning skills. Here we demand it.
We are still waiting.
(ad hominem attacks and misdirection does not count as proof. Show all work)
@Paul L.: Oh, look, you’re a lying scumbag. What a shock.
There are a lot of words being spent lately on just what constitutes a lie and what Trump really believes. We had the same debate bigly re W Bush and WMDs in Iraq. It seemed to make a big difference to some people whether Bush was a “liar” or just misinformed. It doesn’t matter, and it was a waste of time to speculate on what was is in his heart and head. A) Bush’s motives didn’t matter, nothing he said could be trusted. B) it was his JOB to be sure of the facts before going to war. Nothing Trump says can be trusted. It is Trump’s job to be sure of the facts. Whether he’s ignorant, lazy, stupid, or venal doesn’t matter.
@Paul L.: So you are saying that the Democrats are criminal masterminds capable of co-ordinating 3 million plus felonious acts by 3 million plus different people. You are also saying that they were inept enough to take on this huge risk and effort in a place where it brought them no benefit at all. Which is it, evil geniuses or idiots? It’s bad enough to believe Trump’s ridiculous lies, at least think through what his lies mean before repeating them.
I assume that this will follow the same course as the time he dispatched crack investigators to Hawaii to prove that Barack Obama wasn’t born there even after he had released his birth certificate. Trump will soon stop talking about voter fraud, then in 2020 he will claim that there were widespread accusations of voter fraud in 2016 but he was the one who ended the talk. And Paul L will be sitting there nodding to himself believing that is exactly what happened.
You know this is a little like climate change. If there was *actual* evidence disproving climate change, no one would sit on it. Like *actual* evidence of large scale voter fraud, it would be huge news.
But the GOP is bat-shit crazy now, so this is where we are. Listening to idiots and fools and watching in horror as the media struggles mightily to provide cover for all the GOP nonsense.
@Scott:
According to CNN, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is registered to vote in two states. More evidence of widespread Republican voter fraud. Trump’s election is fraudulent and he is illegitimate.
So easy.
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl:
Holy crap…now Butch Trucks is dead.
Who is going to make three??? They always come in threes…
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl: Which is a ridiculous idea. Marches, unless you are able to collect a whole sh*tload of people (enough to spook Lil Donnie) don’t do anything.
Scientists would do a damn sight better threatening to quit and moving abroad. Or for gossakes, using the knowledge we have. What’s the use of having a brain that can design laser beam weaponry if you don’t use it?
@grumpy realist:
And attach them to sharks…ferchristsakes
Meanwhile, among the people who engaged in what Trump calls voter fraud by being registered in two states are the nominee for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s alt-right connection, Steve Bannon.
You can’t make this up.
@Pete S:
With a little help
Of course the law abiding 3 million illegal aliens would not be able to perform any law breaking on a mass scale without coordination.
@Scott :
Mnuchin and Bannon? OMG that makes a bigly percentage of his cabinet so it must be a conspiracy! Quick, to the Senate for more hearings! We need committees and investigations and a catchy slogan for endless chanting. Cheating Cabinet perhaps?
i think this is the study that trump was citing.
@Paul L.:
That’s not remotely close to evidence of anything. At best it’s evidence you don’t like Mexicans, although I’m not sure that it was necessary for you to share that.
@george:
Absolutely. Actually, one of the brightest people I know was insisting it is true when I talked to him recently. He also insisted that SF, LA and other cities “run by Democrats” are “in chaos”… 🙁
@bill:
That’s also not evidence of even one illegal vote.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-third-presidential-trump-pew-report-voter-1476945665-htmlstory.html
@Paul L.:
@David M:
I live in California, and I can tell you with alternative-fact certainty that they do in fact run our elections here. It’s an alternative fact.
I’ve been told that (take my word for it, my sources are the best sources) once they (the rape case people) helped Hillary set up and run that Child Sex Slave operation out of that DC pizzeria, they were transferred to California where they coordinated a very successful effort to get 3 million illegal immigrants to vote for Hillary Clinton.
@bill:
Please point to where that mentions a single illegal vote?
Meanwhile Southern states are begging for FEMA to show up…and Trump is chasing unicorns.
Doh…now Trump says torture “absolutely” works.
This guy believes an awful lot of stuff that is just not true.
@Paul L.:
Looks like that blow landed…
@wr:
Well, to be fair….you probably should have detected a bit of Deboerism in my posts prior to yesterday. Maybe it’s a white guy thing. Maybe it’s something else…
Also:
There’s so much wrong here, it’s hard to know where to start.
First, Trump will not “destroy everything you claim to care about.” He’s going to do a lot of stuff we won’t like, that’s true, but this “he’s going to destroy everything” reeks of the Tea Party era claim that Obama was going to destroy America because he signed the stimulus. Let’s retain some credibility, eh? I happen to think that Trump will be awful enough that no exaggeration will be necessary.
Second, Hillary Clinton is a woman, that’s true, but that is no reason to vote for her. In a world of true gender equality, a woman will rise or fall on their own merits. I happen to think the US was ready for a woman president, and I voted for her. Sadly, it doesn’t appear to be ready for a woman to lose her race…
Third, “my lofty ideals of liberalism.” Damn right they’re lofty, more lofty than the petty BS that has consumed the left for the past few years. So you got Octavia Spencer another Oscar nomination…..that’s great, for Octavia Spencer.
But what if we’d spent that time and energy making sure our new president can’t destroy everything we hold dear? What then?
@Daryl’s other brother Darryl: Actually, one of my fellow classmates did do a thesis on laser beam weaponry and had to dumb it down considerably to keep it from getting classified.
No need for sharks….just satellites.
@KM:
Yeah, that’s the part that really doesn’t pass the smell test. The millions of illegal voters conspiracy is like the truthers, or birthers, or moon landing-hoax conspiracies – it all falls apart when you look at it.
Unfortunately, like those, I suspect its believers are going to double down on stupid.
@anjin-san:
That’s one of the interesting things. Even extremely intelligent people will believe very far fetched things about fields they know nothing about. I had a friend, a very smart lawyer, who kept arguing with me about conservation of force (there’s no such thing) – she was 100% certain she’s learned about in Phys 101. And was offended when I suggested she was confusing force with energy or perhaps momentum.
And yet, she remained a very intelligent person. I almost certainly believe some equivalently wrong things about law. Most people, myself included, dabble very shallowly in politics. We’re bound to believe a lot of things that simply aren’t so. Its a mistake to assume that means people are stupid, but uninformed or misinformed, those are pretty safe assumptions.
@george: One can’t take exception to people being misinformed or uninformed. As you say, we all are. But it is hard to respect people who are determined to remain uninformed.
I believe this is less Trump’s narcissism and more of a deliberate plan of attack to have a federal “investigation” that will purge thousands of Democrats off of voter rolls, and then have red states swoop in and issue draconian voter-ID laws and registration rules.
Soon, if you don’t register vote online and supply a scanned driver’s license to the county board, you won’t be able to vote in most swing states. Sucks to be you if you don’t have a license or a scanner or high-speed cable internet, or can’t take off time from work to go register in person at the county courthouse during daylight hours, from 10am-to 4pm and closed Friday through Sunday. Of course some Republicans won’t be able to vote under these new rules as well, but this isn’t about voter fraud, it’s about preserving White Power at all costs.
And John Roberts will nod and stroke his chin and say this isn’t a problem because something something state’s rights.
@David M: Remember, Paul L. is not a racist. The fact that Bill has an imaginary black girlfriend redeems them all.
@James Pearce: “Second, Hillary Clinton is a woman, that’s true, but that is no reason to vote for her. ”
Hillary Clinton is a Democrat, and that was the reason to vote for her. To keep the Republicans from killing tens of thousands of Americans a year by taking their health care away. To keep the Republicans from putting a religious fanatic on the Supreme Court who insists that women have no right to control their bodies. To keep the Republicans from selling off our national parks and monuments to drillers and miners. To keep the rest of the wealth of this nation from being transferred to the top tenth of a percent. To keep a right-wing fanatic from attempting to end public education in this country.
Those are some of the stakes. But on the other hand, Hillary Clinton didn’t keep proper care of her emails, so it’s a wash, right?
@James Pearce: “Third, “my lofty ideals of liberalism.” ”
I was referring to deBoer’s sanctimonious twaddle, not your own opinions.
I live in a country with mandatory voting. I don’t have to deal with lines and I can simply go walking five minutes to the school where I vote. Most of the time I only vote because I have to vote(There was a year where I was voting less than a hour before voting ends).
I can’t understand someone voting TWO times, in a country where there are long lines in many precincts.
@Paul L.: That is absurd. Totally.
Jack Tapper really went after Trump on this nonsense. And there are Republicans saying this is absurd. Trump did not win the popular vote and if people had a chance to do this election over again, I doubt that the loon would win the electoral college either.
“Vote early and often”.
@James Pearce: “What is going to actually work to build a better world, right now, under these real-world conditions? What’s your plan to make real, substantive, large-scale progress? That’s the question you’re confronted with. If you can’t tie a particular act to a plausible vision of how to make real progress in the real world, then you’re wasting your time.”
This. The problem is: similar to the way people with no leadership skills who often seek to be in charge– Partisans are not planners, nor particularly strategic thinkers. They are reactionaries. If you point out an enemy trench, they’ll charge it with reckless abandon. If there’s no trench in view, they’ll charge around aimlessly until they run out of energy.
This is why Im convinced that Trump and company will be able to implement their agenda with very little (actual) resistance. These people are masters of obfuscation and misdirection and they’ll thrive in this environment because partisans(especially conservatives) believe that anything that pisses off their opposition means they’re moving in the right direction. Trump will continue to say and do symbolic things(now) that piss liberals and democrats off. Its a win-win for him. His support base strengthens because “look how mad the libs are!’ and Dem/Libs are normalizing continuous outrage which numbs people after a while. They’ll sprinkle in the poison pills with the fluff and it won’t even cause a blip…because the opposition right now is always equally mad about everything.
I said before Democrats would fail if they tried to out Republican the Republicans—predictably, that appears to be their exact strategy.
Breaking news:
Trumps daughter registered to vote in two states:
http://heatst.com/politics/exclusive-tiffany-trump-is-currently-registered-to-vote-in-two-states/
AND…..
Trump told the story to hose and senate leaders that a famous golfer (who happens to be a German national) was prevented from voting for him, while a bunch of obviously foreign looking Hispanics were allowed to vote!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/trump-bernhard-langer-voting-fraud.html
Imagine! A white guy could not vote JUST because he was not a citizen!
@wr:
Well, I did vote for her.
And she is going to do precisely none of that. It’s up to us now.
@James Pearce:
I’m still not going to hire you as a marketing consultant.
If Gandhi and MLK had followed your advice, India would still be a British colony and the US would still have Jim Crow.
@gVOR08:
Well, in fairness, most of us are fated to remain ill informed about most of human knowledge all our lives – there’s just so much out there that it would be the work of thousands of lifetimes to get up to speed on most of it. For instance, even the most brilliant current physicists will tell you they’re reasonably well informed on less than 1% of everything that makes up modern physics.
The problem is people who don’t realize, or refuse to admit, that they’re uninformed. I know I’m extremely ignorant about law for instance, and I know I’m going to remain uninformed about it – too many other things, even in (especially in) my field need my attention. If I need legal expertise I hire a lawyer, and listen to his or her advice.
However, if I ever start believing that I am as informed as a lawyer on law (perhaps because I begin watching Law and Order or the like), then the problems start. And that’s what’s going on. If what scientists say about climate change, or GM foods, or vaccines, or fracking is inconvenient, we ignore it because we’re sure the experts don’t know what they’re talking about. And after a few months of reading web sites pushing our side of the issue we’re sure that we know more about it than people who’ve spent their lives seriously studying the subject.
Well, yeah, but isn’t that group where one would expect to *find* illegal voters?
Here’s a fun update: https://t.co/e3oagYgBN2
Quick summary, Trump heard from Bernhard Langer that some brown people voted in Florida, but Langer wasn’t allowed to vote. Of course Langer is not an American citizen…
@grumpy realist:
Tuesday morning they formed the secret Facebook group. It had 5 members. You can only be added by being invited by someone who is already a member. Less than 48 hours later they have 480,000+ members, have engaged professional organizers and are trying to figure out logistics/timing/location, etc.
Don’t be surprised if they get a “sh*tload”…
And don’t forget that the real target isn’t the overgrown toddler but the Congresscritters.
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker: Says who? The only person I heard about voting illegally in 2016 was a woman who tried and failed to vote twice for Trump. And believe it or not Republicans have been accused of this sort of thing before.
@David M: To my left-brained thought pattern, if the President’s people could prove that Clinton carried California only because of the votes of illegal immigrants, establishing said allegation through an investigation would tremendously aid in convincing people that his victory wasn’t a fluke. But that would take time and lots of hard work.
@SC_Birdflyte:
There are 2 problems with your thinking:
1. Clinton’s margin in CA was larger than the total number of undocumented immigrants in California. She won CA by 4.3 Million votes. There are 2.4 Million undocumented immigrants in California – and that includes children.
2. You presume work and evidence matter to Trump or most Republicans. Trump told Congress he knows that there were undocumented immigrants voting because Bernhard Langer, the “famous golfer” told him that he was turned away from voting but saw Hispanic-looking people that did vote. That was his behind-closed-doors rationale. Note that Langer isn’t a US citizen and couldn’t vote himself (apparently Trump has told this story before and in those versions Langer told him about an unnamed friend who was frustrated) or that his evidence that illegals voted was entirely based on racism (“voters who did not look as if they should be allowed to vote”).
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker:
“Republican advocates for strict Voter ID laws have made similar claims about voting fraud in order to justify the laws that they support even when they clearly have a disproportionate impact on minority and poor voters,
Well, yeah, but isn’t that group where one would expect to *find* illegal voters?”
Poor voters are more likely to be illegal? Really?
@Daryl:
You’re only partially correct.
The illegal votes were cast by Trump’s supporters to swing the election Trump’s way.
When the illegal votes are removed, Trump loses the electoral college as well as the popular vote.
@george:
There’s an ad for that:
“You’re not Dr. Stuart!”
“No. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.”
@KM: The new version adds, “I need to see a receipt.”
@SKI: I still think laser beam weaponry is more fun to develop…
…back to inventing….
It appears that there will be a gargantuan expenditure under Trump on the subject of investigating voter fraud at the level of a possible 3 million or more bogus votes. If our system is that porous we do have a problem that needs to be looked into. There should be evidence of such a level of fraud available right now, if only a few hundred to a few thousand bogus votes. I have not seen any indication in the press that even that small level has been detected. So I wonder what evidence Trump is working with that has escaped both the media and the election officials in each state.
@mannning:
Funny thing…
To try to feed those who need raw meat, GW Bush undertook a detailed 5-year investigation into voter fraud, because his supporters insisted it was a major problem…
And found near negligible results. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/25/here-are-nine-major-investigations-on-voter-fraud-that-found-virtually-nothing/
Pretty well the same with the other 8 investigations as well listed in the article.
Looking at these results, the Obama administration didn’t take on any voter fraud investigations, because… well, facts.
But Trump will start it up, spend more $$$ on a unicorn hunt and feed his fragile ego. Because we have seen in republicans that the first 9 times never count.
@mannning:
The media and election officials have missed nothing, there is no such evidence.
This all about Trump’s ego: his inability to accept the fact that he lost the popular vote. I’m fairly certain that he feels that he’s being taunted by Democrats who raise ‘legitimacy’ questions, and he’s not one to let perceived slights go bye the board.
Irony: Never mind that he indulged a 5 year Birther investigation the sole purpose of which was to call into question the legitimacy of the Obama presidency.
@mannning:
It’s his own evidence, gathered using the PIDOOMA method.
@mannning:
He’s not working on evidence. He’s reacting. When the press secretary threw out 3 million illegal votes, one of the reporters sensibly asked that if we think there are 3 million illegal votes, shouldn’t we be investigating this outrage? So Trump now has to back off and say yeah, a big investigation, that’s the ticket. A multi-million dollar snipe hunt with my taxes.
It’s hilarious that Trump couldn’t get the conservative memes right. The only paper he can be referencing said there are a lot of people who have died or moved still registered. So the idiot started talking about double registrations. He failed to realize that there actually is a small amount of double voting, say snowbirds voting in both MI and FL. Bannon and one of Trump’s nominees suddenly remembered they’re double registered. Conservatives don’t care about this, these are mostly real ‘Muricans(tm) who vote Republican. The only improper voting that counts for conservatives is hypothetical hordes of dark complected people voting for Dems.
Won’t be enough to matter, but if Trump really pushes this he really is likely to find he got the majority of illegal votes. Just like the majority of Romney’s 47% who don’t pay taxes are old people, who tend to vote R, so the majority of his 47% probably voted for Romney.
I hope Trump will back off this idea before it gets any more ridiculous. Unless, that is, there is solid evidence to support illegal voting, which appears to be a very long shot.
@James Pearce:
Trump won’t destroy everything we care about, so stop getting carried away! Instead, spend your time making sure he doesn’t destroy everything we care about!
Wow! Donconleone has really hit the ground running!!!!! If only he had hit it from, say, 30,000ft!!!!
I’m sitting here at home in London wondering “what the hell is wrong with that man?”, and “why doesn’t the Republican Party call him out on this nonsense?”
Instead, they refuse to say that that his claims about illegal voters is a lie, and are quite prepared to spend $$100’s of thousands of YOUR tax dollars investigating something THEY KNOW IS A LIE!!!
Like all dictators, DT is already trying to silence government departments, the press etc.
He doesn’t seem to realise, or care, that he cannot silence or bully the WORLD’S press. The pictures of his inauguration crowds were shown here in the UK; reporters at the event confirmed that the crowd was (relative to 2009) sparse. And the scenes of the empty stands (bleachers you call them) during the Parade was just just plain embarrassing.
He puts me in mind of the narration of an episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “The Obsolete Man”:
“….You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future; not a future that will be, but one that might be. This is not a new world: It is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advancements, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: Logic is an enemy, and truth is a menace