Merrill: ‘No reason’ for Trump’s voter fraud probe

In his first full week in office, President Donald Trump has made several false statements including the size of the inauguration crowd and made unproven claims of “major” voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump tweeted at that time that he actually won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”, a comment for which he was widely criticised.

Trump lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by around 2.9 million votes, but won the all-important state-weighted electoral college.

As CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out, Trump’s tweet about VoteStand came less than an hour after the “New Day” interview. Langer told Trump that he had been turned away at the polls in Florida while others who didn’t look as if they should be allowed to vote were allowed to cast provisional ballots, the president said. Moreover, only “some of these noncitizens voted”, they said.

Spicer said the administration was still sorting out the “sequencing” of upcoming orders and that Trump was still making suggestions.

News 21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of NY and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found just 56 cases of noncitizens voting between 2000 and 2011.

President Trump on January 25 vowed to start “immediate construction” of a wall on the Southern border while lawmakers reacted to his unfounded claims about voter fraud. And so this whole talk about – I refuse to talk about voter fraud because it does not exist.

Trump has also cited an Old Dominion University study which suggested 14 per cent of non-citizens said they were registered to vote.

“They would all be for the other side”, he said, possibly forgetting that one of the few arrests for voting fraud in 2016 was of an Iowa woman who tried to vote for him twice. His fixation will “sow doubts regarding the legitimacy of presidential elections” in Americans and the rest of the world, which views the U.S.as a model of democracy.

It is easy – but risky – to dismiss President Trump’s false claims about voter fraud as merely the latest irritation of his notoriously thin skin.

Trump’s exaggerations about inauguration crowds and assertions about illegal balloting hurt his credibility. He also pointed out he can’t vote in the US because he’s a German citizen.

Mr. President, it’s time to move on.

Trump, for his part, has continued to repeat the claim voter fraud had cost him the popular vote. Property restrictions were used to screen voters because property ownership demonstrated two admirable characteristics: First, owners were invested in the community, not transient; Second, property ownership demonstrated a certain amount of proficiency in life, and in a country with abundant natural resources, some argued that not owning property demonstrated a lack of character.

Phillips seems eager to make a name for himself, so he joined Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day this morning to explain how he was absolutely positive 3 million people cheated our election system, and you should be, too, although he doesn’t want to show you the proof because he’s still “checking” it.