Trump wants someone to sue Google because he lost the popular vote to Hillary 3 years ago
Trump’s popular vote performance is one of the worst ever, and he really doesn’t like that.
On Monday, Trump once again expressed disappointment with his 2016 popular vote loss to Hillary Clinton and advanced yet another conspiracy theory to explain away his shortcoming.
“Google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 Election!” Trump wrote. “Google should be sued. My victory was even bigger than thought!”
Clinton had 2.9 million more votes than Trump in the 2016 contest and since then Trump has repeatedly invoked debunked explanations for the gap in voter support.
Trump’s electoral vote is ranked 46th out of the 58 elections in American history. His popular vote performance ranks above only two other presidents.
“His [popular vote] deficit gives him the third-worst vote margin among winning candidates since 1824,” the New York Times noted in 2016.
Trump’s source for the unsupported allegation appears to have been a segment on Fox Business, part of the Fox News disinformation network and a source for most of Trump’s quickly debunked theories.
The segment in question was based on the work of discredited conservative activist and hoaxer James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas operation, which for years has attempted to attack people and institutions on behalf of conservatives.
The claim that Google manipulated election results comes from a conspiracy theorist, Zach Vorhies. “Vorhies is an avid promoter of anti-Semitic accusations that banks, the media, and the United States government are controlled by ‘Zionists,'” The Daily Beast reported. “He’s also pushed conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate, and the discredited claim that vaccines cause autism.”
Trump is himself a conspiracy theorist, most notably as the lead promoter of the racist birther conspiracy that peddled the false story that President Barack Obama was foreign-born.
The attempt to once again cast doubt on the millions of votes that were cast against him in 2016 comes as the head of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, called Trump out for pushing voting conspiracies.
Trump claimed on Thursday that “thousands and thousands of people coming in from locations unknown” led to him losing the presidential race in New Hampshire.
“It is damaging to our democracy” for Trump to make such unfounded allegations, Weintraub told CNN on Monday. “The American people are ill-served when our leaders put forward unfounded allegations of voter fraud.”
It has been 1,014 days since Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. The vote totals have been certified by every state and the District of Columbia. But Trump can’t get over it.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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