Friday, January 27, 2017

DAY 8: Trump blames somebody else for "illegal votes" claim; We thoroughly debunk it

For the third time in less than a week Donald Trump insisted on claiming there were at least 3 million illegal votes in the 2016 election. But this time he blamed that lie on somebody else: on some guy named Gregg Phillips. Apparently as a way to "prove" his claim:



Trump tweeted that apparently after watching an interview between Andrew Cuomo and Gregg Phillips on CNN, in which Phillips was debunked because he refused to show evidence of the claim of 3 million illegal votes. We'll get to that interview later on in this post. But first lets's see how this whole thing started:

The claim of 3 million illegal votes was debunked by Politifact on November 18, 2016, a week after Gregg Phillips made the claim without providing any evidence to back it up, which is apparently Trump's "source" for his lie. From the November 18 Politifact article:

As evidence of its claim, InfoWars’ headline refers to a report from VoteFraud.org and tweets from Gregg Phillips, whose Twitter profile says he’s the founder of VoteStand, a voter fraud reporting app.

There is no report from VoteFraud.org, however, and Phillips told PolitiFact he is not affiliated with that website. The information comes from tweets made by from Phillips on Nov. 11 and Nov. 13.

In other words, the only "evidence" to back Phillips's claim is... his own tweets making that claim.

In his tweets, Phillips claimed:




As you can see, Phillip's tweets never presented any links to actual data proving his claim. He merely claim he "verified".

Interestingly, when a reporter asked Phillips for the data to back his claims, Phillips refused.



His refusal to provide information continued when Politifact asked him for proof:

Phillips would not provide any additional information when asked by PolitiFact. He said he has chosen not to release more information because he is still working on analyzing the data and verifying its accuracy. Phillips would also not say what the data is or where it came from, or what methodology he used.

But that didn't stop him from doing an interview about it on a conservative radio show on December 12, 2016. In the interview he he said once again there were 3 million illegal votes, but provided no evidence. His number, as he exaplained, came from a conjecture he made, claiming it is not possible to verify the identity of people registered to vote.

But there's one problem; that's false.

Let's take California, for example, one of the states Republicans attack the most (and Phillips himself suggested was involved in illegal voting). In order to register to vote in California you need a California driver license or California identification card number. And in order to get a driver license or an ID you need a Social Security number. If you don't have one, you have to say it in the registration form. Which means the state of California does have a way to verify the identity and citizenship status of all registered voters, since the Social Security number contains the citizenship status.

By the way; when the conservative radio host asked Phillips how many illegal votes he had verified, he declined to say. And for the conservative radio host that was fine. He still believe what some guy had tweeted.

What's even more puzzling is the fact that on November 27, 2016, Phillips claimed he started his "project" of illegal votes in 2009. But no evidence has been presented at all in the 7 years leading to the 2016 election.



So where's the proof? And on top of that, when he was asked for proof in December of 2016 in the radio interview, Phillips claimed he wanted more time to get it right. More than 7 years? Wow.

Funny story though: After Trump got inundated with demands to prove his lie about illegal votes during his first week in office, and then put the blame on Phillips on January 26, Phillips finally said this:



In other words, now Phillips is saying somebody else will be doing the "analysis."

Which sounds a lot like "OK, I can't prove it, ask somebody else."

Now, here's another interview with Phillips. This time with CNN's Andrew Cuomo. Notice how he admits he doesn't have proof, but despite that fact he still says there were millions of illegal votes. This interview is apparently the reason why Trump tweeted about it on the morning of January 27:


https://youtu.be/5s7mQvB0HGw

As you can see, Phillips provided no evidence, and even though he claims he has it, he never provides it. And to make it worse, Phillips says in the interview the next Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is the one who should be proving Phillips's claims.

Wow. Just wow.

As per VoteStand, which is the other "source" Trump cited in his January 27, a Twitter user also debunked it:






For Trump to continue repeating this blatant lie is just embarrassing. The more he repeats it, the more it gets debunked.

PS: For more detailed numbers on the 2016 elections read my book HOW DONALD TRUMP WON, available on Kindle and Paperback here: http://amzn.to/2j7WmBE


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