Why are so many media people puzzled that Trump keeps bringing up illegal votes?

The MSM outlets are nearly unanimous that President Trump is “lying” and presenting “deliberate falsehoods” to the American public about illegal votes tipping the majority to Hillary Clinton in the election. The mantra is that there is “no evidence,” so Trump is “losing his credibility” and will no longer be believed. (As if they cared about Trump maintaining credibility.) All of these warnings about lies coming from a president come at the hands of media outlets that rarely if ever used the word “lie” with regard to President Obama’s many prevarications on serious issues, such as the video causing the Benghazi attack and the Obamacare promise of keeping your plan and your doctor. These were politically consequential lies that I do not recall CNN warning about, as this morning’s newscast warned Trump about losing his credibility.

Even on Fox News, most commentators agree that it is a big mistake for Trump to make “unfounded” assertions on peripheral issues like inauguration crowd size and illegal voting. The estimable non-practicing psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer even pronounced it a “character issue.” Dr. Krauthammer consistently ridiculed Trump’s electoral prospects throughout the primary and general election seasons, although I do not recall if he attacked Trump’s character. Perhaps having commendably admitted that he got it wrong, Dr. Krauthammer might wish to examine whether or not there is a strategy or logic, as opposed to – or in addition to – a character flaw at work. I will only briefly address the question of the crowd size dispute, for which I see weaker justification: diverting media attention from the Saturday mass demonstrations, and possibly setting up a crowd size framework for judging the annual March for Life in D.C. this weekend, which is routinely ignored by the MSM despite drawing massive crowds. The media have now bought into the notion that crowd size is a very, very important issue. This amounts to a lazy softball right over the plate for the pro-life movement, Sean Spicer, or anyone else who shares President Trump’s pro-life positions. If Trump’s media enemies like CNN once again ignore the March for Life, they will discredit themselves. It is very clear to me that President Trump intends to destroy the credibility of his media enemies. He realistically understands that they are implacable enemies seeking his impeachment and removal from office (on grounds yet to be ginned up) or, as a fallback, defeat for re-election and a midterm election disaster for the GOP. Weakening the credibility of the media is a continuing goal of his administration. That is the context in which his multiple remarks concerning illegal votes has to be understood. I think President Trump knew that if he made remarks about illegal voting, the media would spring to action and present the opposite position and would characterize his thinking as a lie. The problem with this is that a lack of evidence is not proof for the contrary position. We simply do not know how much vote fraud there is because nobody takes the trouble to investigate how much there is. When a voter presents himself at the polls or requests an absentee ballot, there is no automatic search to discover if the person is a legitimate voter. The very act of asking for voter ID is considered discriminatory by many, including some in the courts. California has adopted a system for granting voter registration to people receiving drivers’ licenses. If the applicants don’t specify illegal alien status at the time, they receive a license that entitles them to register and vote. Even if they do specify that they are here illegally, they still get a license where the distinction is hard to see. Illegal aliens aside, there is the question of people voting under the name of other people, especially the dead who have not been purged from voting rolls. John Fund has written and co-authored two well documented books on the extent of vote fraud. The MSM are now demanding proof for Trump’s assertions, opening the door for the Trump administration to conduct a detailed investigation of vote fraud, which has to have been a strategy all along. When the investigation will be attacked as an effort at “vote suppression,” the Trump administration will have media demands for data to point at. Because nobody can deny that there is some vote fraud, the question becomes, “How much?” If positioning the media to demand what he all along wanted (but knew that the media would attack) is irrational, I do not see the logic. And as for a president “lying,” outgoing President Obama issued a whopper just before he left office: Obama said the U.S. is the only country in the advanced world that makes it harder to vote rather than easier. "And that dates back, there's an ugly history to that that we should not be shy about talking about," he said. In fact, the United States is an outlier in terms of voter ID and ease of voting. So the question that the MSM is pushing is, “How much vote fraud is there?” And Trump has a “character issue” in accomplishing this.