A reporter recently challenged President Donald Trump to explain why he’s so far failed to give much–if any–attention to confirmed GOP electoral fraud in North Carolina. His response was a bit lacking.
“Why haven’t you condemned the North Carolina election fraud? This a big story,” the unidentified reporter noted. “The Republican candidate has called for a new election. Why have you not condemned that, given you condemn other kinds of election fraud?”
“I condemn any election fraud,” the 45th president replied, before launching into a brief commentary about non-existent voter fraud cases in California and Texas.
Recall: California has a substantial vote-by-mail share of the electorate and mail voters in the Golden State–as in most states–tend to favor Democrats. Thus, election night returns which appeared to favor Republican candidates steadily dwindled after the entire picture came into focus. Very few Republicans actually cried foul about this because they are familiar with California’s voting system. President Trump, however, spread unsupported conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
In Texas, the story’s a bit more complicated but essentially hinges upon a large list of suspect voters who were at one point not yet American citizens. Most of the data on said list, it turns out, was old and therefore bad. Many people had since become naturalized and therefore eligible to vote. Texas officials themselves almost immediately backtracked on their initial claims and several lawsuits were filed against the authorities responsible.
The reporter at the press conference understood these issues and noted, “There haven’t been those cases. This is an actual case.”
Trump then told her not to interrupt before continuing on to mention an additional voter fraud conspiracy in Florida–which also didn’t occur. Finally, Trump cast doubt on the now-confirmed fraud in North Carolina.
“I condemn all of it. And that includes North Carolina–if anything–you know–I guess they’re going to be doing a final report and I would like to see the final report.”
Last week, the North Carolina State Board of Elections determined that the Ninth Congressional District race was tainted by absentee ballot fraud on behalf of GOP candidate Mark Harris–but stopped just short of determining whether Harris himself was to blame. All sides eventually came together and called for a new election. The state board ultimately endorsed a re-vote.
[image via screengrab/CNN]
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