The Wall Street Journal recently printed a letter to the editor from Donald Trump, and good for them; while it is in the best partisan interests of Republicans to give Trump as little attention as possible, the former president and potential future presidential candidate’s views are, by any standard, newsworthy.
Thursday, in an unusual step, the Journal editorial board responded formally to Trump’s extensive list of reasons to claim that the election in Pennsylvania was stolen, and the Journal‘s response is brutal. A sample:
We think it’s news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas. Mr. Trump’s letter is his familiar barrage, with 20 bullet points about alleged irregularities that he says prove “the election was rigged.” It’s difficult to respond to everything, and the asymmetry is part of the former President’s strategy. He tosses off enough unsourced numbers in 30 seconds to keep a fact-checker busy for 30 days. When one claim is refuted, Mr. Trump is back with two more . . .
Mr. Trump says that “25,000 ballots were requested from nursing homes at the exact same time.” His citation for this—no kidding—is a Nov. 9 cable-TV hit by Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mr. Trump is alleging 25,000 fake votes in Pennsylvania, based on a stray remark by someone from South Carolina. Breaking news: A politician on TV repeated a rumor. We emailed to follow up, and Mr. Graham’s office tells us this was “an allegation, one of many others,” but it now “can be laid to rest.” Some of Mr. Trump’s figures appear to come from amateur spelunking into voter data. Caveat emptor when this is done by motivated partisans unfamiliar with election systems. The “audit” team in Arizona asserted that Maricopa County received 74,000 more mail votes than were sent out. This was debunked as a misunderstanding of the files.