Donald Trump Hates Recounts, But...

Whoever confiscated Donald Trump's Twitter account in the final days of his campaign probably wants it back again right about now. Over the past couple of days, Trump has fired out responses to the recounts, expressing outrage that they're even taking place. And yet he's also alleged that there was massive voter fraud. As usual, the president-elect doesn't seem to appreciate the dissonance there; he believes without any evidence that there's a problem, and at the same time opposes a possible solution for it. Bodes well for the next four years, doesn't it?

Once the news started rolling in about Jill Stein filing for a recount in Wisconsin and Hillary Clinton's team joining the recount efforts, Trump unleashed an incoherent bunch of tweets about Clinton's supposed hypocrisy. Directly after that, he moved on to criticizing the results of the popular vote, saying that millions of people had voted illegally, baselessly alleging that there was "serious voter fraud" in three states that Clinton won: Virginia, New Hampshire, and California. If he thinks that there was voter fraud in those states, why wouldn't he think that it happened elsewhere as well? If millions of people voted illegally, wouldn't it follow that at least some of those votes came from Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania?

More than anything, Trump seems to be bitter about what the popular vote has revealed. A majority of the American electorate did not support him, and he only won via the Electoral College — an institution he once deemed "a disaster for a democracy." During his recent interview with The New York Times, he said outright when pressed that he had only recently become a fan of the system. Given his prior stance, it would make sense for him to deem his Electoral College win illegitimate — which, of course, he hasn't. He's merely deemed his popular vote loss illegitimate. But if the Electoral College is nondemocratic and the popular vote is tainted by fraud, then what recourse does democracy have besides recounts?

Trump would never say it himself, but he's backed himself into a corner with this logic. But this has never seemed to bother him in the past — nor have the lack of facts to prove his statements. For now, it's safe to assume that the recounts will progress without changing the results of the election, and Trump will continue to malign American democracy while at the same time enjoying all of its benefits.