President Trump has stated that he believes 3 to 5 million illegal votes were cast in the election, resulting in him losing the popular vote. He has now launched an investigation into voter fraud because he believes so strongly in the issue.
Molly Ball, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said that this doesn’t come as much of a surprise to her. This behavior is very typical of Trump, a man who she spent a lot of time covering throughout the presidential campaign. Ball added that Trump often believes a lot of things that aren’t true, including conspiracy theories.
Trump has even publicly stated that he believes Ted Cruz’s dad may have had something to do with President Kennedy’s assassination. Now that Trump is president, these beliefs have major consequences. When someone says that something he believes in is factually wrong, he can order an investigation into it.
While it’s hard to tell what will come of Trump’s investigation into voter fraud, many people worry that it will lead to negative changes in the voting process that will make it much more difficult to cast a vote.
John Dickerson, the host of CBS’ Face The Nation, added that it’s important to have someone in the White House who has the ability to tell the president no. Peter Baker, from the New York Times, said that if there’s anyone who could tell Trump no, it would probably be Jered Kushner, his son-in-law. Baker says Kushner seems to have his hand in a lot of the business Trump has been negotiating during his first weeks in the White House.
But some feel that talking the President out of an investigation into voter fraud could be the wrong thing. He has now started an investigation that could lead to an outcome that a lot of Republicans have been hoping for.
Jamelle Bouie, from Slate Magazine, said that the press secretary made a public statement about voter identification being one way to solve this problem. But many people are worried that, if Jeff Sessions is appointed as attorney general, there will be an unfair crackdown on voter’s rights.
Bouie also added that he feels Stephen Bannon’s position as the head of Brietbart before he joined Trump’s campaign is a bit odd. He worries about what opinions Bannon is bringing to the table. If you examine the things that the administration has been doing in the last week, these seem to mimic the ideas of the aggressive white nationalist rhetoric that are often seen on Breitbart and other sites like it.