President Trump has expressed a number of crazy theories on Twitter about Florida’s election recount. In an “exclusive, wide-ranging interview” with the Daily Caller, Trump expresses even crazier versions of those same theories.
The president shared the following beliefs:
1. Broward County elections supervisor Brenda Snipes is a brilliant mastermind. “When they call this woman incompetent, they’re wrong,” Trump said of Snipes. “She’s very competent but in a bad way.”
Most observers view Snipes as an ineffectual bureaucrat. Her county’s ballots have featured a bad design format that probably resulted in thousands of voters failing to notice the Senate race, potentially costing Democrats the Senate election — 18 years after bad ballot design extremely famously cost Democrats the presidency. The county has also reported its votes very slowly.
This would seem to offer Trump, who enjoys questioning the competence of highly qualified African-American women, a legitimate chance to question the competence of an African-American female official. Instead Trump is portraying her as a secret genius manipulating the election behind the scenes.
2. Voter impersonation is rampant, and often involves disguise. “The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes,” Trump asserted. “When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again.”
It is not clear what role a change of appearance would play. If you wanted to vote under somebody else’s name, you could just go to a different precinct rather than hope your new shirt and hat would fool the workers in the precinct you just used. In any case, numerous studies have found that voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent.
3. Cereal cannot be purchased legally without a valid photo ID. “If you buy a box of cereal — you have a voter ID,” Trump continued. “They try to shame everybody by calling them racist, or calling them something, anything they can think of, when you say you want voter ID. But voter ID is a very important thing.”
There is no requirement to present identification to purchase cereal.
