In an appearance on conservative talk radio host Mike Gallagher’s show this morning, Donald Trump continued the recent escalation of his bogus claims that the upcoming presidential election will be “rigged” against him, absurdly claiming that Mitt Romney and John McCain “got zero votes” in Philadelphia in the last two elections and arguing that GOP officials who reject his election-rigging conspiracy theory are “naïve” or “maybe something worse than that.”
Trump told Gallagher:
When I talk about the election being rigged, it was just reported there are almost 2 million dead people that are registered to vote. And Paul Ryan gets up and he issues a memo that he disagrees that the election’s rigged. Why doesn’t he walk over to Philadelphia and St. Louis, Chicago, and some of these cities. And how could he say the election is—look, nothing’s perfect, but this process is unbelievable, and it’s certainly rigged with the press. So why would he issue a memo that the election’s—is he naïve? Because that’s naiveté or maybe something worse than that. I don’t know what it is, but you know, when you go to Philadelphia, where Romney got zero votes, where McCain got zero votes, so they’re very disappointing.
While it is true that Romney received no votes in some heavily Democratic Philadelphia precincts in 2008, there was no evidence that these totals were fraudulent—rather, they were just the result of a heavily lopsided electorate. Similarly, Obama received zero votes in several precincts in Utah where Romney won in a landslide.
