Donald Trump’s Latest Tweet About the Election Is a Lie

Lying Donald Clearly Not Ready for Prime Time

Even though the election was 56 days ago, Donald Trump is still rehashing the results, trying to change the details of history – the very details he himself has admitted to. Minutes ago the president-elect, clearly still feeling insecure about his Electoral College but not popular vote win of the White House, posted two tweets, one of which is suspect, the second of which is just false. It is a lie, provably so.

Trump is claiming he won the election by 306 Electoral College votes. That’s false, he won it with 304, because two electors turned their backs to him. History will record it as 304, which it was. If you’re going to respect our election methods, however antiquated they may be, you have to accept them in full, and the Electoral College vote is how you win.

Trump also claims he knew he would win, a week before the election, which is a lie.

As MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin noted on Twitter, just three weeks ago Trump told a crowd at one of his thank-you rallies that not only did he think he was going to lose, he told his wife Melania he thought he would lose.

Griffin’s screengrab is from Politico, which also in the same article reported:

“So it began with phony exit polls. And I got a call from my daughter at about 5 o’clock, and she was called by people in their business,” Trump began, referring to his daughter, Ivanka. “And her husband, Jared, great guy, he was called. Then they called me and they said: ‘I’m sorry, Dad. It looks really bad. Looks really, really bad.’”

Trump recalled asking what the problem was and conceded that he “really assumed I lost” because, despite his constant rant against “phony” polls, he thought they had some credibility. 

“So I sort of thought I lost, and I was OK with that,” Trump admitted. “I wouldn’t say great. In fact, I called my vice president and I said, ‘It’s not looking good.’ Right, Mike [Pence]? I said not looking good.”

There’s nothing wrong with admitting you thought you were going to lose, it’s almost humbling, and it also is what the vast majority of Americans thought. And in a sense he did, with Clinton winning almost three million more votes than Trump did.

As far as the cancelation of the fireworks, no one knows why they were canceled, but many reports that day said it was out of not wanting to appear disrespectful.

But to lie about all this, nearly two months after the election, shows a man clearly not ready to lead, and clearly not ready for the most basic requirements of the Oval Office: being truthful to the American people on the most basic of facts. 

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license