President Trump's self-defeating voter fraud delusion — "I really won 'cause them-all cheated"

© 2017 Peter Free

 

25 January 2017

 

 

 Is there a nutcase in our White House?

 

President Trump has already demonstrated an admirably energetic way of approaching the nation's business, misguided though some argue it is.

 

That said, I am sometimes taken aback by the President's propensity for insanely beating imaginary drums. In this case, for example, yesterday's announcement that he lost the 2016 popular vote to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because 3 to 5 million people fraudulently voted.

 

 

Huh?

 

Since the President lost the popular vote by roughly 3 million votes, that means that all 3 million fraudulent folk — at the lower end of his estimate — would have had to vote for Secretary Clinton.

 

How statistically likely is that?

 

Even if we take his upper bound of 5 million imposters, 60 percent of them would had to vote for his female adversary in some sort of organized plot to defeat America's arguably most recognized brand name.

 

That, too, seems to be embarrassingly unlikely.

 

Conspiratorial sinisterness can only go so far, before it unseats the bounds of likely occurrence.

 

 

The moral? — There is (arguably) a difference between — the oft-repeated Believable Big Lie — and the Preposterously Unbelievable Untruth

 

I am concerned that President Trump mistakes the line between the two.

 

His Big Lie tactic has worked well, so far. But if he slops over too often into narcissistically inspired lunacy, he will (one can imagine) lose some of the outsider "smash 'em up" credibility that brought him into office.

 

The risk is that eventually too many folks will write the President off as a nutcase. Which would probably result in raised levels of tumult that we Americans and the World do not need.

 

There comes a time, when even bad publicity is not good publicity. Proportionately few people are going to forgive the President — well-branded though he is — if his egotistical peccadillos eventually sink the American Ship of State.