From Alex Jones straight to the president-elect

Our president-elect has been on a Twitter ranting binge all night and most of the morning, very agitated about the election recount currently under way. And this morning he capped off his stream of angry comments with this unhinged tweet, claiming there were “millions of people who voted illegally” for Hillary Clinton.

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

Where did this bizarre counter-factual claim originate? Our president-elect apparently picked it up from the website of his friend, conspiracy-monger Alex Jones: Report: Three Million Votes in Presidential Election Cast by Illegal Aliens » Alex Jones’ Infowars.

The Infowars article cites as evidence two tweets by a random guy who provides no evidence at all for the claim.

We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens. We are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action. #unrigged — Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) November 13, 2016

Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million.Consulting legal team. — Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) November 11, 2016

Some people on Twitter are suggesting that Donald Trump is posting these freaky tweets to distract people from his huge conflicts of interest with his businesses.

First of all, if you can’t criticize a tweet and keep your attention on a giant conflict of interest story at the same time, maybe you need to lay off the Xanax.

But more importantly, I doubt he’s trying to distract from anything. We already know that he and many of his closest advisers including members of his family get their “news” from sources like Alex Jones. I believe Trump really, truly is this deranged.