I will give Trump credit for this: he certainly is not afraid to just broadcast out there whatever thought pops into his head, fact-based of not.
Saturday and Sunday, he went on a warpath about efforts by Jill Stein and the Greens to push forward with recounts in some key battlefield states. There are some dodgy issues around all of this, to be sure, but whereas a “normal” President would simply issue a press statement, Trump had to go on the Twitter offensive — and, as always, overplay his hand.
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The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802671162383802368]
Why are recounts “impossible”? As far as I know, this is all within the normal deadlines for recount requests in the states in question.
I’m also amused by not just a slam at the Greens, but a gratuitous spitball (“badly defeated & demoralized”) at the Dems. Never let an opportunity pass to attack someone, right, Donald?
The Democrats, when they incorrectly thought they were going to win, asked that the election night tabulation be accepted. Not so anymore!
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802723588759375873]
Trump then goes on to note how, back when he was the one calling into question what the results of the election would look like, the Democrats (and, ahem, a lot of Republicans) were appalled by the rhetoric, but now that he’s won, the Dems are being hypocrites.
The problem with that argument is that Trump was just making vague, unsubstantiated (but damaging) assertions that the vote was “rigged.” The recount requests involved here have a bit more foundation behind them.
At any rate, it’s already-classic Trump to attack someone for making an argument that you previously made.
Trump goes on with seven more tweets[1], noting that Clinton conceded (which is a polite formality, not a legally binding or even necessary action), and that Clinton had decried Trump’s suggestion that he wouldn’t accept the results of the election, ending with (concluding q quote from Clinton’s concession):
Trump is going to be our President. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” So much time and money will be spent – same result! Sad
So much time and money! How much time and money would you have had spent were the elections “rigged” the way you described.
And then Trump went on, upping the ante by moving into the “fact-free” realm:
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
There is no evidence that “millions” voted illegally. None. And Trump certainly presents none. But, hey, it’s obviously not enough for him to claim the Electoral College victory (not really a landslide, but this is a sales guy talking), Trump seems suddenly worried that he won’t be consider “legitimate” unless he also won the popular vote.
But he’s losing the popular vote — by over 2 million votes last I checked. That cannnot stand — so Trump seems to think he can simply assert victory by making up millions of “illegal” votes. Which, in turn, will magically become part of the partisan “truth” about this election.
Crikey.
It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802975667197386752]
He made this comment back right after the election, too. Because it’s not enough to win, you have to have won handicapped by the system and win everything and everyone else is losers because you are the biggest winner. Right?
And then …
Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803033642545115140]
Because it’s not possible that Donald could have lost such key states. So obviously there was “serious voter fraud,” which nobody is reporting because it’s not a real story.
Does anyone else find it ironic that Donald Trump on the one hand dismisses as “sad” efforts at a recount in battleground states he won, but then is willing to turn around and allege, without foundation, massive fraud in states that he lost, and in the overall vote count? No, wait, did I say “ironic”? I meant “sad.”
I will repeat an earlier observation: Donald Trump is possessed of an ego more fragile than any president since Nixon. He must always be the greatest – any disagreement or assertion to the contrary is simply wrong, is being said by a poopy head, and, yes, he is absolutely the greatest, every time, and anyone saying otherwise is probably part of a conspiracy of illegal activity, abetted by the lying media. Right?
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Having exhausted that topic (for the moment), Trump has moved on this morning to something else to bluster about:
If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate deal.
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803237535178772481]
Except that there isn’t a “deal” — just a recognition that treating Cuba as some sort of bizarro pariah state makes no sense for the US. While not the Worker’s Paradise its autocratic government would have the world believe, Cuba is hardly worse than any number of other countries we deal with (like the government of China, whose banks have helped finance so many Trump deals). Opening up to trade and engagement with the US can only help the Cuban people (and Cuban Americans, and the US).
We’ll leave aside the irony of Trump having searched for ways to get into business on the island some years back.
I had really hoped that 2016 would mark an end of the “Florida Cuban Americans drive foreign policy” meme. Alas, it seems not to be, as long as Trump can seem like a bold, forceful, knowledgable leader on the subject.
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[1] Maybe he ought to look into a more long-form social media tool. Either that, or number his tweet sequences.
https://plus.google.com/photos/…
+Doyce Testerman Well, if we assume that Trump projects his on sins onto others …
No one looks good in this.
Not Stein, who has conned millions of dollars in contributions from Democrats, the surplus of which will be used to ensure Green Party placement on ballots. (I happen to support the idea, but the contributors probably don't.)
Not Clinton, who refused to take the high road that Nixon (publicly)* did in 1960 and who has let the validity of the election fester. While Clinton's participation in the recounts is probably just an effort to keep an eye on Stein, the whole thing strikes of wishi-washiness.
And not Trump, who has talked on and on about rigged elections, but who has never addressed the strange fact that a man with no political experience but with a lot of money managed to win huge numbers of votes in the Republican primaries. Hmmm….
As for my man Johnson, perhaps his non-participation in this circus makes him come out looking best.
* See http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2000/10/was_nixon_robbed.html which suggests that Nixon was, um, Clintonian in his 1960 election activities.