Trump: ‘I Won the Popular Vote If You Deduct’ Illegal Votes
President-elect Donald Trump declared Sunday he would have won the popular vote if “illegal” votes were discounted.
“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,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
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
The president-elect also tweeted that he would have won more easily if he had based his campaign strategy on winning the popular vote, instead of visiting states with a larger number of Electoral College votes.
Trump’s second series of tweets Sunday comes as Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign has said it will file for a recount in Michigan, and Pennsylvania, after making an effort in Wisconsin official. All three states are traditionally blue states that Trump won in the presidential election.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump predicted that the recount effort in three states will not change the results of the election.
“Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in. Nothing will change,” he tweeted.
Clinton’s campaign is participating in the Wisconsin recount, which is already set to begin this week.
Clinton is currently leading Trump by more than 2 million in the popular vote. Politicians, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have called for an examination of using the Electoral College to decide who wins the presidency, rather than the popular vote.
Trump warned during his campaign that the election could be rigged, though election officials scoffed at the claims, noting the country’s use of a decentralized system in which ballots are counted by thousands of Democratic and Republican officials across the country.
The group of election lawyers and computer scientists pushing the recount effort says election results in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked.
However, there is no evidence of millions of people voting illegally, as Trump suggested on Twitter.
(h/t The Hill)
Reality
No one candidate has done so much damage to the integrity of the democratic process as Donald Trump, constantly putting into question a fair and valid election, often calling it “rigged.”
Yet he is not above calling a recount of voting in several states a “scam.”