Trump Wants Debunked Voter Fraud Conspiracies Investigated, And Paul Ryan Thinks That’s Just Fine

By: Tony Rivera

Despite squeaking by to win the election, President Donald Trump is having a lot of trouble coping with the fact that on November 8th, he lost the popular vote by a staggering 3 million votes. As the Washington Post just reported, his failure to win more votes seems to be causing him so much heartburn that he has literally been “stewing about his popular-vote count for weeks.”

But unfortunately for our Republic, it’s led Trump to repeat the widely debunked claim that 3 million people participated in the elections illegally. Members of Trump’s own party have understandably voiced concern over these brazen falsehoods.

At first, Speaker Paul Ryan found such concerns to be irritating:

Ryan: “Look, I’m a policy guy. I’m going to sit here and focus on policy and I’m not going to get into the puts and the takes of all of these things.”

Policy? Well, funny you mention that, Mr. Speaker. Just yesterday, President Trump decided to make conspiracies of massive voter fraud a matter of potential policy interest to the government:

 

 

Asked later about Trump’s calls for investigating nonexistent voter fraud, Ryan suddenly decided he had an opinion:

Ryan: “I think it’s fine… if he believes that there is a problem to be looked at, the right thing to do is to get an investigation, to get the facts.”

The question is simple: why does Paul Ryan think it’s “fine” for Donald Trump to waste taxpayer dollars on a major investigation over something that has been debunked by state-level officials and numerous fact-checkers? Ryan himself admitted on Tuesday that he has seen no evidence suggesting any voter fraud–but apparently that’s not relevant anymore. If the President is willing to lie again and again, it is the obligation of Paul Ryan and House Republicans to publicly call him out and demand that he stop.

Unless, of course, Paul Ryan knows that the specter of voter fraud provides convenient cover for Republicans to continue their assault on voting rights. House Republicans have already admitted that voter suppression laws help them stay in office. If Paul Ryan takes issue with this characterization of his party’s support for voter suppression, he should call on the President to abandon this pointless investigation.

“If Speaker Paul Ryan is unwilling to condemn President Trump’s calls for pointless and racially motivated investigations, then he’s governing on a lie,” said Tyler Law of the DCCC. “Ryan’s complacency is tacit agreement that we should be wasting taxpayer dollars to investigate already debunked conspiracies – most likely in an effort to provide cover for more unconstitutional voter suppression.”