Callum Borchers, author at the Washington Post blog The Fix, admits that the press is declaring victory for Hillary Clinton — to discredit claims that the election is rigged.

From the Washington Post:

Since the final presidential debate last week, many news outlets have been delivering an unvarnished message to Donald Trump supporters: Your candidate is virtually certain to lose the election Nov. 8.

“Clinton probably finished off Trump last night,” FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver wrote the day after the debate. “Hillary Clinton is almost certain to be president,” Guardian columnist and former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson added.

A day later, the Times’s Upshot blog increased Clinton’s chances of winning to 93 percent, an all-time high. On Monday, Politico’s Ben Schreckinger wrote that “Donald Trump’s path to an election night win is almost entirely closed.” Here at The Fix, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake wrote that “Donald Trump’s chances of winning are approaching zero.”

These are accurate, statistically sound statements. But they are something else, too. Declarations that Trump is highly unlikely to win also serve as counters to the Republican nominee’s warning that the “rigged” election could be “stolen from us.”

Read the rest of the article here.