US president-elect Donald Trump claimed that he would have won the popular vote if “millions” of illegal votes were excluded, hours after criticizing an effort to recount votes in three battleground states.
“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,” Trump, a Republican, said on Twitter on Sunday.
In a subsequent tweet, he said that the media were not reporting “serious voter fraud” in the Democratic-leaning states of California, New Hampshire and Virginia.
Trump offered nothing to back up his allegations of wrongdoing in the Nov. 8 election — one that returned to his pre-election mantra of a “rigged” result.
Although Trump beat Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College, the former secretary of state led Trump by more than 2.2 million votes in the nationwide popular vote, according to a running tally by the Cook Political Report.
“It appears that Mr Trump is troubled by the fact that a growing majority of Americans did not vote for him,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said on Twitter. “His unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in California and elsewhere are absurd. His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a President-elect.”
Cook shows Clinton with 64.65 million total votes to Trump’s 62.42 million, or a lead of 48.2 percent to 46.5 percent. Third-party and other candidates received 7.19 million votes, or about 5.4 percent. In 13 swing states, Trump won 48.4 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 46.6 percent.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump criticized recounts proposed for Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are being spearheaded by Green Party candidate Jill Stein — an effort that Clinton’s campaign on Saturday said it would join.
In seven Twitter posts, Trump recounted previous comments by Clinton on the need to accept the election results, culminating in her concession speech on Nov. 9.
“So much time and money will be spent — same result! Sad,” Trump said.
On Saturday, he called the Green Party’s recount efforts a “scam to fill up their coffers.”
Trump aides on Sunday fanned out across political talk shows to cast cold water on the recount efforts.
Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff, said on Fox News Sunday that the planned recount would serve “only to divide this country when we need to come together.”
The effort was “confounding and disappointing,” Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“It turns out Team Hillary and their new BFF [best friends forever] Jill Stein can’t accept reality,” Conway said in a statement on Saturday.
Stein has raised more than US$6.1 million for her recount effort, with a US$7 million goal, according to a running tally on her Web site.
Clinton’s campaign will participate in the recount “to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias said on Saturday.
Elias, in a post on the blogging Web site Medium, added that he does not expect the action to overturn Trump’s election.
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