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“Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out,” Trump wrote at the top of his op-ed, insisting — contra facts — that he actually won the state of Pennsylvania.
Before we go any further, let’s revisit what happened in Pennsylvania in 2020.
And the closeness of that result led Trump to make several attempts in the wake of the election to have courts step in. A federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit in November 2020, writing: “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption. That has not happened.” Around that same time, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected an attempt by Trump’s campaign to stop the counting of some absentee ballots in certain areas that included Philadelphia.
On November 24, Pennsylvania certified the results in the state after all 67 counties had certified their results individually.
There is simply no there there. None. Zero. Zilch.
Which, of course, the Wall Street Journal and its editors know. (Sidebar: Trump’s letter was published in the “Opinions” section, which is separate from the news and reporting end of the publication.) And that knowledge makes what they did all the worse.
The op-ed section at the Journal will likely hide behind First Amendment free speech arguments to defend themselves. But that misses the mark, since our speech is bound in all sorts of ways already. You can’t yell “bomb” on a plane without repercussions. Or “fire” in a movie theater. (Remember when we used to go to the movies? Yeah, that was fun.)
Under that same logic, you can’t simply allow lies about the 2020 election to be printed in a major national newspaper under the guise of free speech. There is absolutely no evidence that any of what Trump wrote in the letter is true. (He appears to have cobbled much of it together from a group known as Audit the Vote PA, which touts a number of debunked…
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Source : cnn
