February 13, 2017

Trump's senior policy adviser Stephen Miller put the bogus massive voter fraud claims made by Trump back in the news yesterday and when CNN's Alisyn Camerota interviewed Rep. Scott Taylor (VA-2), it took him over four minutes to finally admit he'd like to see the evidence Trump and his officials say they have.

Camerota asked, "Do you believe that?"

At first he was being a good soldier for Trump and said Virginia doesn't have massive voter fraud: "There's been some instances here, of course." But he believes we should look into it to root out any potential voter fraud.

Camerota asked, "Do we all know that massive voter fraud exists?"

Taylor kept vacillating between knowing there isn't any massive voter fraud, but wanting to say there was a little voter fraud. Camerota wouldn't let him straddle between the two.

He said, "Whether it's vast or not, that should not stop us from taking every precaution necessary to keep the integrity of our elections."

Election officials in each state feel that way too, because it is their job! And actual election officials have confirmed there is no real widespread voter fraud occurring in America.

Camerota persisted, "Why do you think the White House -- since you don't know of any evidence of vast voter fraud, we in the media can't find any evidence of vast voter fraud, so why do you think the White House keeps talking about it?"

Rep. Taylor continued to bring up isolated incidents of what he called voter fraud, but that did not address Trump's obsession with it.

He said he wouldn't have made Miller's comments and didn't want to get into the numbers, but felt each state should be vigilant against voter fraud.

Camerota replied, "Sure, and the vast majority of the states' Secretaries of State, who help run these things, say there is no evidence of vast voter fraud in their state and I think there is a distinction between a hand full of cases which you cite and people do know about."

Taylor got miffed and said, "Don't put words in my mouth, Alisyn, please."

She continued, "You tell me your numbers. I am trying to figure out the numbers because I think you're citing the Old Dominion University. If you're citing that study they did not find vast voter fraud. If that's the study and the research that you're pointing out. They found again registration irregularities but not significant voter fraud."

He weakly replied, "It wasn't massive, it was more than a handful.."

Taylor continued, "I don't know of evidence of massive, millions of voter fraud that I'm hearing out of the White House; sure I'd like to see it of course," he said.

Camerota said, "Is it responsible for the White House to be talking about?"

Taylor quipped, "We're spending a lot of time on this question."

She replied, "because it keeps coming up."

Taylor finally gave up and said, "Sure, if he's on national television saying there's evidence of massive, millions of voter frauds, sure he should show some. Absolutely."

If a Trump surrogate or Republican is going to back up Trump, it's essential that interviewers get them to answer a direct question about Trump's tweets and unhinged obsessions (something they are loathe to do) no matter how much air time it takes.

At least Camerota didn't let him easily off the hook.

Good for her.

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