STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on, though, to the question of voter fraud as well. President Trump again this week suggested in a meeting with senators that thousands of illegal voters were bused from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and that’s what caused his defeat in the state of New Hampshire, also the defeat of Senator Kelly Ayotte.
That has provoked a response from a member of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, who says, “I call upon the president to immediately share New Hampshire voter fraud evidence so that his allegations may be investigated promptly.”
Do you have that evidence?
Sununu later said he did not mean to imply that “I see buses coming over,” saying it was more of a figure of speech.
.. False. As shown above, this is disputed even by the researcher whose work is being cited by Miller
.. “Carmichael noted that Kobach has not brought a single case against a noncitizen for voting illegally. All of the cases he has brought concern U.S. citizens accused of voting in more than one state.”
.. MILLER: We should stop the presses. And, as a country, we should be aghast about the fact that you have people who have no right to vote in this country registered to vote, canceling out the franchise of lawful citizens of this country.
That’s the story we should be talking about. And I’m prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the president of the United States is correct 100 percent.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you just repeated, though, you just made those declarations. But, for the record, you have provided zero evidence that the president was the victim of massive voter fraud in New Hampshire. You provided zero evidence that the president’s claim that he would have won the general — the popular vote — if 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants hadn’t voted, zero evidence for either one of those claims.
.. It’s pretty shameless to cite research in a way that even the researcher says is inappropriate, and yet Miller keeps saying 14 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote. The Republican governor of New Hampshire has admitted that he was wrong to say buses of illegal voters voted in the election, and yet Miller shamelessly suggests that is the case. Miller cites a supposed expert on voter fraud, Kobach, who has been mocked for failing to prove his own claims of voter fraud. Miller also repeats a claim about people being registered to vote in two states, even though that is not an example of voter fraud.
Trump’s call for election-fraud probe fraught with peril
Former Justice Department lawyers and prominent Democrats are warning the president against a blatantly political exercise.
.. Such an effort would also conjure up memories of an anti-voter-fraud drive launched under President George W. Bush a decade ago. That initiative — and the firing of some U.S. attorneys who were reluctant to go along with it — led to a major political imbroglio that prompted the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
.. Perhaps due to those sensitivities, White House press secretary Sean Spicer suggested Wednesday that Trump is more likely to pursue a commission that would examine the sources and scope of potential fraud rather than trying to find cases to prosecute. Spicer described the planned inquiry not as an investigation, but a more genteel-sounding “study.”
.. “Part of the reason we need to do a study is … there’s a lot of people that are dead that are on rolls, that are voting in two places or that are on the rolls in two different states, sometimes in three different states,” Spicer said
.. Even a high-profile commission would be something of a high-wire act, since Democrats will insist that controversial voter ID laws also be part of any such review if they take part.
.. “The thing I want him to do, I want him to investigate, are all of the people who don’t get the chance to vote, who have been denied the right to vote,” Cummings said.
.. “The Obama administration had the tools to fight voter fraud but let them gather dust. Because of that neglect of their duties, aliens got on the rolls, people voted multiple times and lawlessness took hold of our elections.”
How Sean Spicer Wins by Losing
In a conventional administration, Spicer would have been shredded by now and recycled to the American Beverage Association to serve as its spokesman.
.. It’s the job of every presidential press secretary to finesse the misstatements and gaffes made by the boss. But no podium-pounder in recent memory has been asked to do what Spicer has been asked to do—apply a gloss to baseless conspiracy theories that have already been debunked—and retail it to reporters.
.. Reporters are onto the Spicer gambit already, none more so than NPR’s Mara Liasson. On Monday, she slyly asked him to name the unemployment rate, a frequent subject of Trump’s trutherism. On Tuesday, she again toyed with Spicer when she asked in a slightly exaggerated manner whether Trump’s allegation of massive voter fraud by 3 million to 5 million people doesn’t necessitate an investigation. “Maybe we will,” Spicer said, before drifting off into a free-associationland comment
.. How did the Generals win by losing? For one thing, nobody expected them to win. Their defeat was integral to the greater game plan, part of their service to a higher power, specifically the Globetrotters.
.. Nobody who understands Trump expects Spicer to beat the press in the briefing room as he defends his boss’ latest nutbag idea, only to keep the ball in plausible play until time is called and the cameras dim. Like the Generals, Spicer must put up a fight that’s good enough to deflect attention from the president
What’s the method in Trump’s madness?
On the one hand, he has continued to make himself out as a “populist” standing up for workers by scrapping the Trans-Pacific Partnership and bringing verbal pressure on American companies to keep or create jobs in the United States.
On the other, he has been promising corporations the moon.
.. In principle, it’s possible that Trump is returning to the days of William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge. From the 1890s to the Great Depression, Republican presidents pursued policies that were simultaneously pro-business and protectionist.
.. And so far, his announcements about jobs “kept” in the United States under his pressure have been largely symbolic, involving relatively small numbers in an economy where 152 million people are working.
.. he said he’d ask for “a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD,” using those Trumpian capital letters.
Here again, Trump set off a debate between madness and method. The most obvious conclusion is that we are confronting yet another case of his bizarre insecurity. He’s furious that even though he is president, his enemies are denying him a popular mandate because he lost to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes. But voting rights advocates fear that he is laying the groundwork for extensive voter-suppression efforts aimed at making voting far more difficult for Latinos, African Americans and others hostile to him... If there is any consistency here, it lies in the right-wing nationalism of his senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon. He hopes to marry broadly conservative economic policies with protectionism, restrictions on immigration, and new infrastructure and military spending.