CNN reports that President Trump still believes there was massive fraud during the last election – and he wants it investigated:
President Donald Trump called on Wednesday for “a major investigation” into voter fraud, following through with baseless claims he has made since November’s election alleging millions of illegal votes during the general election without citing any evidence.
“I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and … even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” Trump wrote in two consecutive tweets.
[Bold mine.] Steve Benen and others are disbelieving:
It’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that Trump can apparently be baited into doing almost anything. He’s pushed this ridiculous ideas about voter fraud for months and never even hinted about the need for an investigation. Yesterday, however, journalists effectively said, “If Trump were serious, he’d be demanding a probe,” leading the president to quickly start tweeting – complete with unnecessary capitalization and exclamation points – about his newfound interest in an investigation, an interest he apparently discovered after watching some TV news.
But here’s the thing – speaking as an independent, if the investigation is conducted properly, only good things can come out of it. Here are the scenarios:
- Rampant fraud is found. Great! I don’t care which way it leans, let’s clean it up. This improves our democracy.
- Fraud is not found. Great! Trump shuts up and the numerous attempts by the States to to impose tighter controls on voting, often found to be discriminatory by the courts, lose all basis for their continuance in legal fact. This improves our democracy.
The hard part is conducting the investigation properly. It will require an impartial authority – which, sadly, the FBI has lost – and a transparent process so that reasonable partisans (which excludes anyone who thinks Breitbart News has any consistent validity) may be satisfied that the investigation methods were appropriate to the problem. A suggestions box might even be provided in case the investigating authority misses a bet.
But if I were directing these sites that have a liberal lean, I’d tell them to just advocate for a thorough investigation and drop the denigrative adjectives. If the investigation finds nothing, then there’ll be a far stronger moral authority over Trump – and another argument to use against him if he is chooses to run for a second term.
