The Washington Post tallied 1,218 false or misleading claims by President Donald Trump in his first nine months in office. That’s an average of five a day. In just seven weeks before the midterm elections, the Post counted another 1,419 false or misleading claims — an astounding average of 30 a day.
It’s not just his increased frequency that’s jarring. It’s his material. His newest false claims of electoral corruption have the potential to harm America. A week after the president declared “close to a complete victory” for he and Republicans on election night, he’s more than misleading. He’s dangerous.
On Twitter, commenting on close Senate and gubernatorial races, Trump has said it was a “disgrace” that Florida was “all of the sudden” finding “votes out of nowhere,” made allegations of “electoral corruption” in Arizona involving mail ballots and blasted Georgia officials for not declaring Republican Brian Kemp to be the state’s governor-elect.
The president offered no evidence of any kind for his claims about alleged fraud in the three states, which all have Republican governors and voted for Trump in 2016. Taking weeks to get it right and to finish counting ballots is not nefarious. It’s normal.
The president should learn from Republican Rep. Martha McSally, who gracefully conceded Monday to Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, her Democratic opponent in the Arizona Senate race. Top White House and GOP officials reportedly urged McSally to question the vote count. Instead, she did the honorable thing. She promoted a centuries-old electoral process instead of corrosive conspiracies about it.
Editorial by The San Diego Union-Tribune
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