Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump made the case why we must have an immediate general recount of the whole election.
Millions of illegal votes. That’s something that definitely requires some attention. It’s a claim of the greatest recorded voter fraud in American history by at least a couple of orders of magnitude. Close examination of past elections have found only a handful of fraudulent votes, and while we do know of at least one Trump voter who was caught voting multiple times, the president-elect would surely have to have considerable evidence before making such a claim.
The president-elect has not provided any evidence for these claims.
Wait. No evidence? Calling the entire election into doubt with claims of massive fraud kind of fits the whole scenario of “attack on democracy.” Surely no one in a position of power would do so without a great deal of verified proof.
President-elect Donald Trump alleged Sunday, without evidence, that "millions of people" voted illegally for Hillary Clinton and otherwise he would have won the popular vote. It's an unprecedented allegation by a president-elect.
Or at least, some really disturbing evidence of fraud.
President-elect Donald Trump tweeted a stream of thus-far baseless claims of voter fraud Sunday, indicating that the Hillary Clinton campaign's involvement in an election recount was hypocritical.
Okay. Fine. Do over!
Not only has Trump’s stream of tweets proven to be a challenge to democracy, it’s been a test for headline writers.
Normally, when the President of the United States says something, a “says” is more than enough to headline a story. Generally you can count on a “President Average: here is something I said.” to deliver the news. The president has made a statement. Here it is. We’re not in that world any more.
For example, on Sunday, CBS News first went with this …
Donald Trump: "Millions" voted illegally for Hillary Clinton
But somehow that didn’t have even a soupçon of truthiness. So they tried again.
Donald Trump, citing no evidence, claims "millions" of people voted illegally in the 2016 election
Which is better, though a bit clumsy. Though it’s pretty close to the kind of thing.
With No Evidence, Trump Claims 'Millions' Voted Illegally
That showed up
Trump falsely claims 'millions of people who voted illegally' cost him popular vote
In lots
Trump provides no proof to back up claim of voter fraud in N.H.
and lots of places.
Trump falsely claims that millions voted illegally, costing him the popular vote
Though of course Donald Trump does have some really good proof of fraud. And we’ve known it for some time.
President-elect Donald Trump, who once declared “I don’t settle lawsuits,” took to Twitter Saturday to justify his decision to pay $25 million to settle fraud lawsuits over his now-defunct Trump University real estate seminar program. He also hinted that had he not been so busy preparing to take office, he might not have settled.
Seriously, Congress, how hard would it be to push through a national “Oopsie, Let’s Try That Again Act?”
And the evidence for that would be? Wait … wait. Nevermind. Forget I asked.