TIL Desk World/Washington/ President-elect Donald Trump asserted that he would have won the US popular vote were it not for “millions of illegal” ballots, while dramatically sharpening his criticism of a recount in Wisconsin, calling it “a waste of time.”
With the recount threatening to revive debate about the legitimacy of Trump’s victory — his rival Hillary Clinton won far more popular votes, while he carried the all-important Electoral College count — Trump and his aides pushed back hard yesterday.
Trump let fly a series of early-morning tweets in which he quoted Clinton about the need to respect the electoral process, while continuing to wage an extraordinarily public battle over the makeup of his future cabinet.
By late afternoon, Trump furthered that “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 had warned before the election that the result might be “rigged,” but he had offered no such complaint after his unexpected victory November 8 — until now.
