Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:18 pm
While Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork for his probable (although still not guaranteed) loss to Hillary Clinton this fall by claiming the election system is “rigged,” the rest of the world is collectively shaking their heads in disbelief.
That includes President Obama, who slammed Trump’s “conspiracy theory” at a press conference on Thursday.
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Obama said:
Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean? The federal government doesn’t run the election process. States, cities, communities all across the country – they’re the ones that set up the voting systems, the voting booths. If Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, including in places like Texas, where typically it is not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that’s ridiculous, that doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think anyone would take that seriously.
Anyone with basic knowledge of the election process – and access to Google – knows that voter fraud is a problem only in the minds of right-wing loons who can’t stomach the fact that their regressive agenda has been rejected in the last two presidential elections.
As I touched on yesterday, there have only been 35 cases of voter fraud from 2000 to 2014, when over 800 million ballots were cast.
Trump’s suggestion that the process will be rigged against him has no basis in reality, and Obama is right to call him out for it. It’s not just factually wrong, but it adds flame to the already-raging fire of political division and gridlock in this country.
We shouldn’t be surprised, though.
This is a guy who rose to right-wing political fame because of the birth certificate myth he started peddling five years ago. Now he plans to end his short political career with another outrageous conspiracy theory.
The scary thing is that there are some people who actually take it seriously.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
