Donald Trump has become so unhinged over Jill Stein’s recount of some states’ presidential votes that you have to wonder what he is afraid of being unearthed. It’s a terrifying prospect to watch a future president become so unglued and vindictive over an attempt to protect democracy. But for “fair and balanced” Fox News, Job One seems to be pretending that there’s nothing wrong with the president-elect.

In case you missed it, the Green Party’s Jill Stein has raised funds to pay for recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and is raising money for a recount in Michigan. The Hillary Clinton campaign has issued a statement saying that while it concluded there was no need for a recount, now that one has been initiated, the campaign will participate.

It seems like a minor matter. But Trump can’t take it. The man who can't be bothered to read the daily intelligence briefings has tweeted 13 times, by my count, about this.

Even worse, one of his so-called justifications contained a giant, conspiracy-theory whopper:

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 — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

A few other tweets:

The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Trump is going to be our President. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead." So much time and money will be spent - same result! Sad — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016

PolitiFact investigated and rated “false” the allegation that three million “illegal aliens” voted when it was made by InfoWars a few weeks ago. But our future president seems to think fact-checking inflammatory accusations about our democracy is as unimportant as daily intelligence briefings.

He also seems to miss the point that if millions did vote improperly, that’s even more of a reason to have a recount.

Unless, that is, you have something to hide. And Trump sure is acting like a guy with a guilty conscience. His former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, even made a not-so-thinly-veiled threat today that Trump might prosecute Hillary Clinton in retaliation.

Got that? A president of the United States might have his political foe prosecuted because he’s piqued over her desire to participate in a recount of votes. Decent people should be horrified.

But not Fox News! An article on FoxNews.com reiterated Conway’s threat and completely overlooked the thuggish authoritarianism behind it:

“I would say (Trump) has been incredibly gracious and magnanimous to Secretary Clinton at a time when for whatever reason her folks are saying they will join in a recount,” senior Trump transition team adviser Kellyanne Conway said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “She congratulated him and conceded to him on election night. … The idea that we are going to drag this out now where the president-elect has been incredibly magnanimous to the Clintons and to the Obamas is incredible.” Meanwhile, Conway refused to rule out the possibility of further investigating Clinton over her use of a private email server while secretary of state between 2009 and 2013.

Fox News.com did note, “There's been no indication of widespread vote manipulation, illegal voting or hacking that materially affected the outcome one way or the other.” But there was no mention of the frightening scenario of a president-elect fear mongering about the integrity of our voting system with blatant falsehoods.

On Fox Report tonight, host Laura Ingle said something similar. She turned to correspondent Bryan Llenas for more. He tried to defend the indefensible but wound up making Trump look irrational rather than dangerously authoritarian:

LLENAS: It appears that the president-elect is questioning the legitimacy of an election in which he won. The fact of the matter is that Hillary Clinton is winning the popular vote by over 2 million votes nationwide. But by tweeting that he believes that there is possibly millions of fraudulent votes out there, he’s essentially going back to what he campaigned on. Remember, he had said during the campaign that he was afraid or at least skeptical of the fact that he thought that there were undocumented immigrants, people who had died that perhaps showed up on voting rolls and that perhaps could have fed into fraudulent votes. But by tweeting this, he’s essentially questioned the legitimacy of the election.

By the way, Trump did not say, as Llenas reported, that there were “possibly” millions of fraudulent votes. Trump definitively declared that such a thing had happened.

Neither Llenas nor Ingle pointed out that Trump’s behavior, by any standard, makes him dangerously unpresidential.

Watch Llenas and Ingle below, from the November 27, 2016 Fox Report.