Twitter witnessed another important claim from President-elect Donald Trump. He claimed that apart from winning the Electoral College, he also won the popular vote by a landslide, if one deducts the millions of the people who voted illegally. Though Trump will be president, what marred his victory was that more people voted against him.
Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore, Flickr“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted.
Trump’s theory of invalid votes may have come from a random tweet, notes The Washington Post. On November 13, Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, tweeted that there were around 3 million votes that were cast by non-citizens.
Phillips claimed that his organization has a database of about 180 million voter registrations, and around 3 million of them are non-citizens.
“We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens. We are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action,” Phillips tweeted.
Twitter bewildered by Trump’s assertion
The Trump team had nothing to say when evidence of voter fraud was demanded. However, it was enough to take Twitter by surprise, says CNET.
Professor Tom Nichols of the U.S. Naval War College tweeted: “Two reactions to Trump’s ‘I won the pop vote’ tweet 1. omg 2. What bad thing is about to happen that he’s trying to distract us from.”
Others like Bush-Cheney strategist Matthew Dowd saw some rationale in Trump’s tweet, saying that if many voted illegally, then there should be a nationwide recount. Columnists like Tom Knight had a short and simple request to Trump, asking him to give his phone a break.
Some Twitter users did not let go the situation without taking a dig. One such user asked Trump to eat a Snickers because, “You aren’t presidential when you are hungry.”
Trump, who was impervious to such tweets, said he would have won the popular vote by a greater margin, had he campaigned in just three or four states rather than in the 15 states that he visited. Some whose views are in stark contrast to Trump’s, termed the tweets by Trump as a mere diversion, notes CNET.
There could be some sly psychology behind such a post, or it could be as simple as that Trump likes to win it all and is not happy with Hillary Clinton wining the majority of popular votes.
