Last night, Donald Trump repeated his claim to members of Congress by falsely asserting that millions of illegal voters robbed him of the popular vote. During a press conference on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer doubled down standing firm behind Trump’s position on the issue.
“The president does believe that he has stated that before. He has stated his concerns of voter fraud, and he continues to maintain that based on studies and evidence that people have presented to him,” Spicer said. Trump is obviously quite concerned about this issue. Over the last few months, he has continuously brought it up despite repeated fact checkers disputing his claims. According to several reports, he repeated the claim Monday night to lawmakers, saying that three million to five million undocumented immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton.
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
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
This all came to a head Tuesday afternoon when several reporters at the press conference grilled White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer with a very logical question: If there is so much illegal voter fraud going on, will Trump call for an investigation? If the President of the United States really believes that many millions of people voted illegally, it seems reasonable that we should look into this and restore confidence in our electoral system. What followed were four massive dodges by Press Secretary Spicer. Watch the compilation in the above video or we’ve transcribed it for you them below.
DODGE #1
Reporter: Is the White House going to formally ask for a probe of alleged voter fraud?
Sean Spicer: I think we won very handily with 306 electoral votes, 33 states. He is very comfortable with his win.
DODGE # 2 ( a few minutes later)
Reporter: If 3 to 5 million people voted illegally that is a scandal of astronomical proportions doesn’t he want to restore Americans faith in their ballot system, wouldn’t he want an investigation of this?
Sean Spicer: As I’ve noted, he believed this for a longtime and I think he won fairly overwhelmingly.
DODGE #3 (seconds later)
Reporter: I’m asking you why not investigate something
Sean Spicer: Maybe we will. (interrupts)
Reporter: That is the biggest scandal in American electoral history — 3 to 5 million people voting illegally?
Sean Spicer: We, we will see where we go from here. Now the focus of the president is on putting America first. It was a comment that he made and longstanding belief.
Dodge #4 (a few minutes later))
Reporter: Four days ago, he got the power of the presidency to do something about it, so why not definitively say that he will investigate if he believes and the administration position is that there was massive voter fraud?
Spicer: First of all, the comment that he made was 3 to 5 million people could have voted illegally based on the studies he’s seen, but he’s certainly declared he’s won the election based on the 306 electoral votes that he got. We are here on Day 2 let’s not prejudge what we may or may not do in the future.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s columnist Jay Bookman summed it up pretty well:
Trump claims that 3-to-5 million people voted illegally, yet he refuses to investigate. So one of the following two things must be true: (1)
— Jay Bookman AJC (@jaybookmanajc) January 24, 2017
A.) His refusal to investigate such a serious thing is a violation of his oath to defend the Constitution; or B.) he is lying his butt off.
— Jay Bookman AJC (@jaybookmanajc) January 24, 2017
[image via shutter stock]
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