CNN’s Jake Tapper slammed the Trump administration’s most recent voter fraud lie, asking if the president actually believes the claim that buses full of out-of-state residents were brought into New Hampshire to illegally cast votes for rival Hillary Clinton.
That claim was made by Donald Trump during a closed-door meeting with senators last week. Senior advisor to the president, Stephen Miller, further propelled the lie during his rounds on the Sunday news programs this week, baselessly insisting “anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics” knows bussing in voters is a “very real” and “very serious” issue in the state. The administration has yet to provide any evidence to back up the claim.
On Monday’s “The Lead,” New Yorker writer Amy Davidson noted Trump has a history of making baseless claims about voter fraud when faced with the reality that he actually lost to Clinton by almost three million votes.
“We certainly haven’t heard the last of the voter fraud, the implications that our system is corrupt, that it’s undermined, that there’s something fishy about it if it arrives at any result other than a Trump victory,” Davidson said.
“That’s the thing,” Tapper replied. “It’s not that he ever fails, it’s that someone steals something from him. And here you have—he’s angering Republicans in New Hampshire.”
Atlantic writer Ron Brownstein said while he was originally under the impression that Trump’s baseless voter fraud claim was about pride, it’s now clear the president’s “intent is moving in a different direction,” suggesting the administration is “trying to pave the way for further restrictions on voting.”
Turning to Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol, Tapper asked what he thought the motive behind Trump’s latest voter fraud lie is.
“Do you think, Bill, that there’s a method to this, that he wants to have more voter ID laws,” Tapper asked. “Or do you think this is just him grabbing onto the latest wild conspiracy theory that he read on InfoWars?”
Kristol said Trump believes in conspiracy theories that “play to his vanity,” but argued questions about national security—like Trump’s public deliberation over a response to North Korea’s missile launch—are actually what the public should be focused on.
“All this other stuff is rhetoric—lies,” Kristol added. “Either out of personal vanity or achieving domestic political goals.”
Watch the clip below, via CNN:
