Donald Trump continues to promote a "fake" story about massive voter fraud, which produced 'millions of votes" during the general election in an interview with ABC's David Muir.
Muir began by asking Trump about statements he made at the White House last week when he said he lost the popular vote because of millions of illegal votes.
Trump whined that he thought the meeting was supposed to be confidential and Democrats misrepresented what he said, but of course he's made these bogus voter fraud claims numerous times before and in public.
As Trump elaborated on how he could have won the popular vote if he had campaigned differently, he then used a Pew Research paper that cites mostly administrative issues with voter registrations and is sub-titled, "Evidence That America’s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade," as proof of voter fraud.
Trump magically turned registration problems into millions of illegal votes..
Trump said, "They don't wanna talk about registration.You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. They're registered in a New York and a New Jersey. They vote twice. There are millions of votes, in my opinion."
How does Trump know if anybody registered in two states actually voted twice? Did Steve Bannon and Steven Mnuchin vote in two states since both are registered in as such?
Trump continued, "I want the voting process to be legitimate."
Muir then asked, "When you say in your opinion millions of illegal votes, that is something that is extremely fundamental to our functioning democracy, a fair and free election. You say you’re going to launch an investigation into this."
Trump replied, "Sure. Done."
Muir then hammered home the obvious and said, "What you have presented so far has been debunked. It’s been called false..."
Trump interrupted, "Take a look at the Pew report."
Muir replied, "I called the author of the Pew report last night and he told me they found no evidence of voter fraud."
Trump dumbfounded said, "Really? Then why did he write the report?
Muir, "He said no evidence of voter fraud."
Trump then said, "Excuse me. Then why did he write the report? Look at the Pew Report. Then he’s grovelling again."
As he usually does when cornered, Trump then attacked the reporter, "You know, I always talk about the reporters that grovel when they wanna write something you wanna hear. But not necessarily millions of people want to hear, or have to hear."
(Politifact has investigated and concluded that Trump and Sean Spicer's claims were: False.)
Muir, "So, you’ve launched an investigation?"
Trump replied, "We're gonna launch an investigation to find out."
Of course Trump turned petty and continued, "Of those votes cast, none of them come to me. They would all be for the other side. None of them come to me. But when you look at the people that are registered: dead, illegal and two states and some cases maybe three states, we have a lot to look into."
By watching this interview, one can conclude that Trump never read the report at all. Does he even read?
Jesse Richman is one of the authors of the study and in an interview that appeared in Wired said, "The Trump administration’s interpretation of his report is totally off. ...Trump and others have been misreading our research and exaggerating our results to make claims we don’t think our research supports,” Richman says. “I’m not sure why they continue to do it, but there’s not much I can do about that aside from set the record straight.”
After CNN played that segment, Wolf Blitzer asked David Becker from the Center for Election Innovation and Research about his part of the report.
Becker said, "They all come to the same conclusion which is that the administrative inefficiencies that might exist on the voter rolls do not result in fraudulent ballots being cast."
Period. End of story.
But it's not the end of the story because Trump will never back off a conspiracy theory that he feels makes him look bigger and better. His fragile vanity won't let him stop.
