Anderson Cooper Dishes On Donald Trump’s ‘Millions Of Illegal Voters’ Claim

Anderson Cooper delved into Trump’s belief that millions of illegal voters helped Hillary Clinton win the popular vote on Anderson Cooper 360° Monday evening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUjjw1QT7MQ

“The president believes what he believes — that’s what Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said today about the president’s claim that millions of undocumented immigrants illegally voted and voted for Hillary Clinton,” Cooper said, adding that if that actually happened, it would be the biggest voter fraud event in modern times.

“If the president really believed it happened, you would think he himself would be calling for investigations. Either the president believes something for which there is no evidence, or he doesn’t really believe it and is just using this as an excuse to explain why he didn’t win the popular vote.”

Anderson Cooper than moved to his “Keeping Them Honest” video segment, which showed Spicer speaking about Trump’s claims. The narrator of the video said that Trump’s accusations have been questioned by Democrats and Republicans alike. He also noted that Trump made the “illegal voter” claims months before the actual election took place.

As the Washington Post noted last month, Trump claimed there were three to five million illegal voters and zero of those votes were for him.

“After all, if it’s possible that 3 to 5 million illegal votes were cast, as Trump alleges, isn’t it possible that such massive fraud could have also helped him?” asked columnist Aaron Blake, who explained that Trump won by about 80,000 votes in the three states that really mattered.

Anderson’s “Keeping Them Honest” segment also had Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina saying that if Trump believes all this about the illegal votes, he should disclose his proof and ask for an investigation.

Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny then appeared live thought a video feed. Anderson Cooper asked him if President Trump’s own attorneys have already ruled all of this out.

“Indeed they did, Anderson. If you remember back to that lawsuit of the potential recount of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — in the Michigan case specifically, the Trump lawyers argued that all evidence points that the 2016 election was not tainted by fraud or mistakes,” Zeleny answered.

Zeleny told Anderson Cooper that if one asks Republicans, most of them do not agree with Trump’s assessment. They do believe he won the electoral college and can’t understand why Trump has been pushing the “illegal voters” theory.

Cooper than invited Pew Research Executive Director David Becker to talk about a study that the White House has been citing for months. Becker’s study found that while there are millions of out-of-date registrations that do exist due to people dying, there was no evidence of voter fraud.

Becker agreed and said that the study was trying to quantify the challenges that election officials had. He noted that this study came out five years ago, but now things have massively improved. Becker believes the voter roles for the 2016 election were the best that election officials have ever obtained.

“I don’t know of any evidence. I was at Pew and I ran the election research team. I was there for eight years… I don’t know of any study that has found any kind of significant voter fraud,” Becker said, admitting that some studies have found as much as 31 cases out of a billion nationwide, which is rather insignificant.

Do you agree with Anderson Cooper and David Becker that voter fraud isn’t a huge issue — at least not as much as Donald Trump is making it out to be? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

[Featured Image by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]