America’s toddler-in-chief apparently remains consumed by his electoral loss in 2000. He continues to insist that the loss could not possibly have been legitimate–obviously, any loss or setback he experiences is clearly the result of nefarious doings on the part of his enemies. (Trump doesn’t have “opponents”–anyone who criticises or counters him is automatically an enemy to be demeaned and discredited.) Even when he wins, as–to America’s lasting shame–he did in 2024, he remains fixated on what appears to be a pathological need to erase past losses.
And so we are being treated to his continuing tantrum about the 2020 election, allied to an obvious efforts to prevent GOP losses in the upcoming midterms.
Normal people can be forgiven for finding this fixation tedious, and shrugging it off as additional evidence of Trump’s mental illness and increasing inability to conduct himself as an adult. Interestingly, however, election officials in several states have conducted studies focused on one of his most persist claims–that his loss was attributable to voting by hordes of “illegals”–and that massive voting by non-citizens continues to threaten free and fair elections.
The New York Times recently published an op-ed reporting on the results of those studies.
As the essay notes, charges that noncitizens are illegally casting ballots have become commonplace. On X, Elon Musk claims that significant numbers of illegal immigrants vote. Rudy Giuliani charged that there were “probably about 250,000” votes from noncitizens in 2020 in Arizona–a state that requires proof of citizenship to vote. Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence to support those and similar allegations. Even the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation could come up with only 24 instances of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections in the ten-year span between 2003 and 2023.
More recently, several states have investigated these allegations of noncitizen voting by cross-checking their voter registration rolls with citizenship status. Their conclusion: non-citizen voting is virtually nonexistent.
Utah has approximately 2.1 million registered voters, among whom the study found one “confirmed noncitizen.” “And that one noncitizen, while registered, had never voted.”
Idaho has one million voters. When the state ran a similar test in 2024, they uncovered 36 “very likely” registered noncitizens. Thirty-six! As the secretary of state reported “out of the million-plus registered voters we started with, we’re down to 10 thousandths of one percent” of the overall count–assuming all of those registered actually voted. (Some elections are close, but hardly close enough to be affected by ten thousandths of a percent–even if one assumes that all 36 individuals voted and voted alike.)
Louisiana’s investigation in 2025 identified some 390 noncitizen registrants, “79 of whom had voted in at least one election over the last several decades (out of 2.9 million registrants).” Montana found 23 “possible” noncitizen registrants out of the state’s 785,000 people registered to vote. And Georgia’s 2024 audit found 20 registered noncitizens out of the 8.2 million who were registered.
The Republican author of the essay writes that he spent four years overseeing voter registration in Maricopa County; in those four years, he had come across “a total of two possible instances of noncitizens voting out of some 2.5 million registered voters.”
Some politicians are trying to exploit even these small numbers. In Michigan, the Macomb County clerk, Anthony Forlini, who is running for the top election office in the state, the secretary of state, recently announced to great fanfare that he’d found 15 noncitizens on his county’s voter rolls of over 724,000 registered voters. The incumbent secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, then tasked her team with investigating the 15 files. It found that three of the people were U.S. citizens, four were previously removed from voter rolls, four were under further investigation and four do seem to be noncitizens.
Rather obviously, these constant accusations about noncitizen voting are an effort to score political points with low-information MAGA voters. But as the author notes, these allegations come at a real cost–they erode Americans’ confidence in the integrity of elections and they are an insult to the hard-working public servants who routinely oversee and guarantee our free and fair elections.
But as he also notes, and as so many of us fear, these accusations aren’t just “part of the broader story he’s concocted to avoid accepting that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.” They are also a threat to this fall’s midterm elections.
That threat isn’t a miniscule number of votes cast by non-citizens. The danger comes from the craven Republican politicians bending their knees to our mad would-be King–and thereby facilitating his corrupt and fraudulent efforts to cling to power.
Good government folks are preparing to protect the midterms, but a truly massive turnout–a huge Blue Wave–is the only sure-fire way to stymie these efforts.
Pages from the Nazi playbook include the premise of lie repetition. So, this pathetic and psychotic president and his equally craven administration will just keep at it until they are all gone back to their mansions on their hills of grift. They will continue to lie, because they aren’t equipped for the truth or for governing anything beyond an ant farm.
Trump’s entire life has been a grift and a lie. It’s what that evil family has lived off of for a couple of generations. It’s what the Fred Trump legacy means to our country. And, sadly, tragically, 77 million voters believed the lies and voted for a psychopath while 81+ million voters were so absent of social consciousness that they didn’t vote at all.
This situation displays democracy’s biggest weak spot: participate or lose it to tyranny. I love Nicolle Wallace’s shirt that reads “Democracy is not a spectator sport”. I’d add: “Because of you don’t participate, we’ll all be spectators to our own demise.
I’m not a shrink, but I believe psychological projection goes with pathological liars. Trump and his fellow MAGA Republicans are worried about “cheating” because that’s what they do. In those states and counties, as Sheila mentioned, are controlled by MAGA Republicans. Maricopa County is probably one of the worst for illegal behavior.
Since TPUSA is headquartered in Phoenix, I’ve had to deal with MAGA’s way more than I wanted to. Same with Texas and Utah. The Republicans love to claim that they are the most transparent administrations, but they are anything but open and democratic. In Phoenix, the Chief COO at Turning Point, along with his grifter Senator, were part of the fake electors in 2020. They literally sent their votes for Trump to the federal government even though they weren’t electors. LOL
And yes, they got caught, but since they did it for Trump, Lying Don granted them clemency. What I’ve found in these MAGA communities is that they are all pathological liars and cheats, but they protect each other. The conflicts of interest are abundant. When challenged, they don’t care. “They are in power, so you can eat shit.”
If you remember, Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, was a loud gay-bashing lawyer who blackmailed judges and worked with the mob. At the same time, he was gay. That’s who taught Sleepy Don to lie, lie, and lie some more. And when you are guilty of crimes, you tend to project those crimes onto others. It’s why I read Trump’s words closely, because they are generally confessions. 😉
The real threat is that congress will pass a law requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Only about 50% of the population has a passport. Only a half a dozen states have implemented the real ID laws in such a way that proof of citizenship is guaranteed. Half of the population could be excluded from voting. Almost any married woman could be excluded from voting because of name changes create a mismatch with their birth certificate.
The new American catchphrase will be “Show me your papers”.
So where was the Governor of Georgia when the ballots were taken? Has anyone seen him object? Were are these ballots? The bathroom of Mar a Lago? Kidding aside, there should have been an intervention by the state of GA immediately to set up a secure place for any audit. So Republicans in GA have been complicit. Where is Brad Raffensperger? Trump hectored Congress so much during the Biden administration he may as well have been president for his influence over voting. He is actually in his third term.
Yes, what Dan said. Women should immediately obtain a passport and have their name legally changed back to their birth name. “Sorry hubby, my right to vote is on the line.”
Todd, you may not be a shrink, but your comments about projection are right, and, as Trump and his maggots are so much about cheating, they expect that anyone worth his/her salt would do the same.
Yes, Vern, it’s too bad that the Kaiser would not let Trump’s grandfather back into the country…after he left it to escape having to do military service for said Kaiser.
Roy Cohn did the same thing that JEdgar the Hoover did, bashed his own crowd.
Sure, the “Big Lie” was a favorite of Hitler’s: say it loud enough, and often enough, and the fools will buy it.
If I recall correctly, the warrant for the raid on the Fulton County Election Center was signed by a Magistrate in Missouri. Judge shopping might not be illegal, but it is certainly contrary to DOJ practices, not that it matters in this administration.
Did the Magistrate get on the list for Orange Jesus’ next Gatsby Party? Maybe the next new Supreme Court Justice will be from Missouri? The true believers never stop believing and they never stop doing whatever is asked of them, no matter how extreme.
What history will lock into humanity’s common memory is that this deviation from Constitutional democracy came on our watch, and that will always stain our personal memory with the question: how could you have let this happen?
That thought should be followed by an analysis of how overcrowding and technocratic extremely severe wealth and power concentration disrupts our ability to run our lives in a functional, minimally invasive way through democratic participation in choosing leaders. Clearly, democracy failed us in these times, proving it, and we are not foolproof, at least under these circumstances.
I have given up on speculating about the consequences of this failure of the commons. Like climate change, our political failure will lead to at least a dent in the future, but it could result in a fatal crash. In our chaotic creation, we are no longer what creates the future, but only the bearers of the consequences of the impact of our failure.
We are no longer in control of our future.
Don’t confuse me with facts – Trump won in 2020 by 500,000,000 votes – don’t confuse me with math either
I don’t think the new voter law will pass, but here is a contrarian view – how many politically aware suburban woman will have the time, energy, knowledge, and money to jump through the hoops and vote versus how many low information Trump voters?