Donald Trump has found “proof” of his totally wrong, misleading belief that massive voter fraud is what caused him to lose the popular vote by historic margins.
Where is this proof? Oh, well, it’s in a tweet from a random person, and has been thoroughly debunked by PolitiFact. Way back in November.
“Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!” Your new President tweeted Friday morning.
Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2017
Here’s what serves as evidence for President Trump, in case you want to more fully understand his war on science, facts, and reality:
We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens.
We are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action. #unrigged
— Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) November 13, 2016
Well, to be fair, there was a second tweet:
Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations.
Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million.
Consulting legal team.
— Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) November 11, 2016
Who is this person? According to his Twitter page, and we know from Donald Trump that if it’s on Twitter it’s real, he founded “Vote Stand”, a voter fraud reporting app where conspiracy consumers turn in pictures of electrical and phone cords as proof of voter fraud.
But PolitiFact found that he is actually a lot more partisan than that. “According to his page on LinkedIn, Phillips is a former finance director of the Alabama Republican Party. He also served as executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party and was managing director of a super PAC that supported Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign for president.”
PolitiFact noted, “There is no report from VoteFraud.org, however, and Phillips told PolitiFact he is not affiliated with that website. The information comes from tweets made by from Phillips on Nov. 11 and Nov. 13.”
Oh, so Phillips is not associated with the website Vote Fraud. Just the app. There is no “study” but there was that tweet.
“VoteStand is an app for random whackjobs to intimidate people and take pictures of what “looks like” voter fraud to them,” observed Twitter user Cody Johnson, who shared a picture from the app:
.@realDonaldTrump Here’s an example from the app. “Jumbled wires” near a voting booth looks like “machine tampering”. Or, a fan. Or, wires. pic.twitter.com/hRJuBoEDQl
— Cody Johnston (@drmistercody) January 27, 2017
The website Info Wars, Donald Trump’s previous rival in disseminating conspiracy theories, ran a headline with the same claim citing Phillips’ tweets as evidence.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of the fine minds running our country for the Republican Party.
Donald Trump saw a tweet, never more evidence will he need.
This is right up there with Trump’s “thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering” claim that thousands of Arabs were cheering in New Jersey after 9/11. Even when presented with evidence that he was wrong, Trump doubled down and claimed he “saw it on television.” This simply never happened.
And so we are about to waste millions upon millions hunting down those imaginary fraudulent voters, so that Donald Trump can believe that America doesn’t hate him quite as much as it does.