As good as true

So the man-baby is calling for a “major investigation” about the imaginary voter fraud that’s been bothering him. He claims there were 3 -5 million votes cast illegally for Hillary Clinton in the election (and none cast illegally for him).

As with most of what Trump blathers and tweets, there are absolutely no facts on which to base these fantasies. There are no “studies”,  no news reports (other than a couple of instances where people voted twice for Trump), and certainly no real support from other Republicans, who once again have to either nod their heads at his crazy assertions or hunt down a molecule or two of honesty or courage. Always a challenge for them.

And, of course, it immediately came to light that Trump’s daughter Tiffany was registered to vote in two states, as was senior strategist Steve Bannon, and Treasury Secretary pick Steve Mnuchin. Oh, and also son-in-law and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner as well as Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

There have already been nine investigations on this issue, and none have found any problems. In fact, the opposite was found: only four verifiable cases of voter fraud out of 130 million votes cast. I guess maybe those investigations weren’t “major” enough.

If you believe Trump is actually playing chess at the Grand-master level, you might think that what this is really about is the creation of more stringent voter ID laws down the road, which everyone understands will benefit Republican candidates in future elections.

If you believe, as I do, that the man-baby doesn’t have the attention span needed for chess, and that there’s actually no evidence he knows how to play checkers either, then you’re left with a couple of possible explanations for this weirdness.

One is that it’s just inconceivable to him that people don’t love and respect him as much as they should, so he creates a narrative that explains the apparent disconnect, usually involving crimes or conspiracy, and always involving “unfair” treatment.

Another is that this is yet another example of the Master Distracter at work. Today we’re not talking about Russian shenanigans, conflicts of interest, nepotism, or anything we should be.  Dilbert was on point today.

I think that’s a big part of what’s going on here, as well as one other thing: once you assert it and repeat it a few times, it’s as good as true. We’ve talked about Trump’s use of the Big Lie  before, and also how he’s not tweeting at you or me but at his base of 60 million believers. For them, it doesn’t matter if there are actually any studies, or, if there are, what they might find. For Trump’s minions, voter fraud is already a real thing because Trump said it was.

It’s already as good as true.