'No evidence of any schemes': Trump's latest courtroom tactic blown up by analyst
Former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign tactic for manufacturing election fraud conspiracy theories — which even his own hired guns admit are baseless — was laid bare this week, Philip Bump wrote for the Washington Post Thursday.
"Over the three-plus years since the election, no evidence of any schemes that affected the vote has been uncovered — despite the enormous effort from Trump and his allies to uncover some," wrote Bump.
"But this is not important to Trump. What is important to him is telling his base of support that he, not Biden, was the legitimate winner of the 2020 contest."
ALSO READ: ‘Official’ Trump calendar omits a critical detail
Bump calls the argument surprisingly effective argument considering the lack of evidence to support Trump's claims.
He notes six in 10 Republicans told CNN last year they believed President Joe Biden didn’t win the 2020 election and that more than a third believed there was evidence to prove it.
Trump is "relentlessly boosting" innuendo and misleading grievances, Bump argues. In essence, he "throws out whatever purported evidence he can muster, however tenuous, to convey a sense of wrongdoing."
Bump broke down Trump's 27 bullet points of "evidence" for election fraud in 2020 filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals as he seeks presidential immunity from special counsel Jack Smith's criminal charges against him.
Many of his claims are false, Bump argues, while others are true but not evidence of legitimate fraud.
"It’s far quicker to skim the Trump team’s claims and get a sense of wrongdoing than understanding why that sense isn’t warranted," concluded Bump. "On Thursday, Suffolk University released polling conducted for USA Today. Among its findings? Nearly half of Republicans think that the 2024 presidential results won’t be accurately counted. Not hard to figure out why."