Trump Lobs Dangerous Allegations On Voter Fraud; Paul Ryan Refuses To Lead
By: Meredith Kelly
Like some weird real-life version of Back to the Future Part II’s Biff Tannen (no, seriously), Donald Trump seems perfectly content spending the weeks since Election Day locked up in Trump Tower, tweeting conspiracy theories. While no President-Elect since 1976 has waited this long to hold a press conference, President-Elect Trump has passed the time slamming the cast of Hamilton, puffing up his chest about Trump University, and complaining about SNL. And this weekend, he absolutely went wild with some new accusations:
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
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016
Just like most things Trump, disproving claims about massive voter fraud is not difficult at all.
Paul Ryan, however, still hasn’t directly condemned the President-Elect’s wild conspiracy theories. If there is any elected leader who has the responsibility to denounce in no uncertain terms false claims of rigged voting or sketchy election results, it should be Trump’s highest-ranking Republican endorser. It was Ryan, after all, who refused to bring to the floor a renewal of the Voting Rights Act, despite claiming he’s a strong supporter of protecting voting rights. And his home state of Wisconsin (along with numerous other states) also seemed to go out of their way to add new restrictions to voting in 2016.
If Paul Ryan is struggling to collect his thoughts about Trump’s latest comments—hardly the first time, to be sure—then we have a few questions for him that will hopefully get the conversation started:
- Does Speaker Ryan condone the President-Elect’s dangerous and false claim that millions of people voted illegally in this election?
- Is Speaker Ryan concerned that the President-Elect is tweeting about something that has been widely debunked by most experts?
- If Trump’s words do indeed concern Speaker Ryan, why did he refuse to act to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, which would have protected against voter fraud and suppression?
- Is this a signal from Donald Trump that he and House Republicans support new restrictions on voter rights?