"The deed is done. Too late trying to convince me of anything now."

 I blogged, 5 years ago today, with this photograph:

"Meade and I walked over to the First Congregational Church, walked through the dark hallways, and passing us right at this point was a young man in a black T-shirt that said in big letters: TRUMP. I'm keeping my privacy about how I voted, so don't even ask. I wish the best for my fellow Americans and hope that whatever happens, you'll be able to handle it."

That was written at 10:55 in the morning, when we had no idea what a wild crazy day it would be. 

In the comments, Snark wrote:

Has Althouse said why her vote will be private this time? (or were past votes initially private as well? Can't remember, but I don't think so?) That's what I'm curious about, and what it means in the abstract if it can be extrapolated in any way to the thinking and behaviour of other voters. I could hypothesize that as a blogger she just doesn't want the distraction and inherent uselessness of knee-jerk blowback in the comments for the next four years, either way. Or that she perceives some value to the blog in being formally inscrutable. Or that she is being practical given that her commenters and perhaps her readers too lean right, and she has already sensed a shift in tone at times that suggests prudence. I wonder, too, if she and Meade voted the same way or differently.

Did I ever reveal how I voted? I think I eventually did, but I can't remember why or where. I wasn't happy with the choice! I wasn't happy in 2020 either, but in 2020, I revealed who I voted for: No one!

"According to a new book, Obama called Trump a 'madman,' a 'racist, sexist pig,' 'that fucking lunatic' and a 'corrupt motherfucker.'"

 The Guardian reports. 

The book is "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump" by Edward-Isaac Dovere. This is the same book that quotes Jill Biden saying that Kamala Harris should "go fuck herself."

According to the article, Dovere writes that Obama preferred Trump over Ted Cruz as the candidate, because he thought Cruz is much smarter than Trump. To that, I'd say that there are different forms of intelligence — Obama ought to know — and Cruz has strong conventional indicia of intelligence but Trump is some sort of genius. The challenge is to have enough intelligence of your own to discern what field of human endeavor is the dimension of Trump's genius. If you fall short, you will find Trump is a big idiot.

Later, Obama — speaking to "big donors" — said Trump  is "a madman." 

Obama also said things like "I didn’t think it would be this bad," "I didn’t think we’d have a racist, sexist pig," and "that fucking lunatic." I consider all those statements meaningless fluff... other than the "I didn't think," which I regard as Obama's excuse for not using his clout against Trump. Why give Obama money now when he didn't even help get Hillary elected?

"The FBI was warned sections of the controversial Steele dossier could have been part of a 'Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations'..."

"... according to newly declassified footnotes from a government watchdog report. The December report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz examined the FBI's investigation into alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as the FBI's four surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.... Several footnotes in Horowitz's report were redacted, and Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson pushed for the declassification of four footnotes related to the Steele dossier... Footnote 350 in the IG report addresses the FBI's knowledge of Russian contacts with Steele and the potential for disinformation. Steele had 'frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from (redacted) indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting.'..."

Writes Catherine Herridge at CBS News.

"Obama cyber chief confirms 'stand down' order against Russian cyberattacks in summer 2016."

Writes Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News.

As intelligence came in during the late spring and early summer of [2016] about the Russian attack, [Michael] Daniel instructed his staff on the National Security Council to begin developing options for aggressive countermeasures to deter the Kremlin’s efforts, including mounting U.S. “denial of service” attacks on Russian news sites and other actions targeting Russian cyber actors....

Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, asked about a [passage in the book “Russian Roulette”] in which one of Daniel’s staff members, Daniel Prieto, recounted a staff meeting shortly after the cyber coordinator was ordered by Susan Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, to stop his efforts and “stand down.” This order was in part because Rice feared the options would leak and “box the president in.”

“I was incredulous and in disbelief,” Prieto is quoted as saying in the book. “It took me a moment to process. In my head, I was like, did I hear that correctly?” Prieto told the authors he then spoke up, asking Daniel: “Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?”

Daniel has confirmed that the account was “an accurate rendering of what happened” in his staff meeting....

"Republicans can exhale now. Convicted coal magnate Don Blankenship’s surprise third-place finish in Tuesday’s West Virginia GOP Senate primary sidestepped yet another debacle..."

Sidestepped? Blankenship got less than 20% of the vote, and even the guy who came in second beat Blankenship by almost 10 percentage points.

I'm reading Politico's analysis of yesterday's primaries.

To sidestep is to avoid something by stepping to the side. The oldest usage of the word, according to the OED, is in football (so, I guess: soccer), when a player just steps to the side to avoid a tackle (is there tackling in soccer??). Figuratively, it means "To avoid or evade (an undesirable person, situation, or challenge); to avoid discussing or dealing with (a difficult or disagreeable issue)." So, something or someone is coming at you, and instead of engaging and fighting, you just step to the side, and it/they miss you. Seems like something that happens in cartoons... and — to be fair to Politico — that Blankenship thing did feel like a cartoon....

Blankenship was living in a Phoenix halfway house this time last year, after his conviction for conspiracy to skirt mine safety rules after an incident claimed the life of 29 miners at one of his facilities. He called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “Cocaine Mitch” and made racially charged comments about McConnell’s family.

I've got to admit, I averted my eyes. Glad it's over. I still don't know what "Cocaine Mitch" was all about, but I've glanced at "The kooky tale of ‘Cocaine Mitch’" at WaPo's fact checker long enough to see that it got 4 Pinocchios... speaking of cartoons.

"The miscalculations and bureaucratic inertia that left the United States vulnerable to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election trace back to decisions made at the end of the Cold War..."

"... when senior policymakers assumed Moscow would be a partner and largely pulled the United States out of information warfare. When relations soured, officials dismissed Russia as a 'third-rate regional power' that would limit its meddling to the fledgling democracies on its periphery. Senior U.S. officials didn’t think Russia would dare shift its focus to the United States. 'I thought our ground was not as fertile,' said Antony J. Blinken, President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state. 'We believed that the truth shall set you free, that the truth would prevail. That proved a bit naive.'"

From "Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options" in The Washington Post. Weird headline, no? It's a long article, and it's #1 on WaPo's most-read list right now. It's a little annoying to untwist what they are trying to say, which I don't think is that "trolls" move quickly on the internet, but that the Obama administration was caught sleeping on the job.

AND: Note that "decisions made at the end of the Cold War" means things that Bill Clinton did:

The United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an all-out information battle during the Cold War. But the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the Bill Clinton administration and Congress in 1999 shuttered America’s preeminent global information agency.

“They thought it was all over and that we’d won the propaganda war,” said Joseph D. Duffey, the last director of the U.S. Information Agency, which was charged with influencing foreign populations....

"Many of the male journalists who stand accused of sexual harassment were on the forefront of covering the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump."

"Matt Lauer interviewed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump in an official 'commander-in-chief forum' for NBC. He notoriously peppered and interrupted Mrs. Clinton with cold, aggressive, condescending questions hyper-focused on her emails, only to pitch softballs at Mr. Trump and treat him with gentle collegiality a half-hour later. Mark Halperin and Charlie Rose set much of the televised political discourse on the race, interviewing other pundits, opining themselves and obsessing over the electoral play-by-play. Mr. Rose, after the election, took a tone similar to Mr. Lauer’s with Mrs. Clinton — talking down to her, interrupting her, portraying her as untrustworthy. Mr. Halperin was a harsh critic of Mrs. Clinton, painting her as ruthless and corrupt, while going surprisingly easy on Mr. Trump. The reporter Glenn Thrush, currently on leave from The New York Times because of sexual harassment allegations, covered Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign when he was at Newsday and continued to write about her over the next eight years for Politico. A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable.... It’s hard to look at these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton and not see glimmers of that same simmering disrespect and impulse to keep women in a subordinate place...."

From "The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election," by Jill Filipovic in the NYT.

"I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right."

I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017

ADDED: Other Trump tweets reacting to Donna Brazile's spilling her story (in order from oldest to newest and with one in italics because I'm only suspecting that it belongs in the set):

Donna Brazile just stated the DNC RIGGED the system to illegally steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Bought and paid for by Crooked H....

....This is real collusion and dishonesty. Major violation of Campaign Finance Laws and Money Laundering - where is our Justice Department?

My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.

Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..

...New Donna B book says she paid for and stole the Dem Primary. What about the deleted E-mails, Uranium, Podesta, the Server, plus, plus...

....People are angry. At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!

The real story on Collusion is in Donna B's new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!

Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.

Bernie Sanders supporters have every right to be apoplectic of the complete theft of the Dem primary by Crooked Hillary!

The rigged Dem Primary, one of the biggest political stories in years, got ZERO coverage on Fake News Network TV last night. Disgraceful!

Do "Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote"?

I just finished reading "The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote," by Sharyl Attkisson. About half way through I was saying "This book would make a lot more sense if Hillary Clinton had won the election," because the  "shady" operatives Attkisson scrutinizes (notably David Brock) were working to elect Hillary, and Trump was on his own, making it up as he went along.

I imagine that Attkisson had already done the majority of the work that went into this book before she had to account for the fact that Trump won. The activities she describes are important to understand, but they don't "Control What You See, What You Think, [or] How You Vote," because Trump got elected.

We weren't limited to mainstream media, which are (as Attkisson describes in detail) passing along propaganda generated by political operatives. We could go to Trump rallies or watch them on YouTube. We could read Trump's tweets and retweet them. We could read and write on Twitter and Facebook and blogs (often ripping into the MSM propaganda). The "shady political operatives and fake news" were not controlling what we saw and certainly not what we think or how we vote. That's what they wanted to do, and they threw (and are still throwing) a fit that we didn't restrict ourselves to the propaganda they wanted to feed us, but in 2016, more and more people decided what MSM were serving is toxic.

It's still very useful to read Attkisson's account of how those people operated. It worked to some extent, it might have worked if the GOP candidate had been anyone other than Trump, and it's important to figure out how it failed, because there will be efforts to re-rig the corrupt system to get it to work again somehow.

In the second half of the book, Attkisson does address how Trump beat the system that had seemed so formidable. Here's a sampling of how she incorporated the Trump phenomenon into the thesis of her book (and I think she did this much better than the book's subtitle suggests):

"This one Clinton quote shows why her supporters hate the media."

Headline on a David Weigel piece at WaPo. To me, it's just ludicrous to think that the media were anti-Clinton — at least in comparison to Trump.* But what Weigel has is this Clinton quote...

If you drive around in some of the places that beat the heck out of me, you cannot get cell coverage for miles. And so, even in towns — so, the president was in Harrisburg. I was in Harrisburg during the campaign, and I met with people afterward. One of the things they said to me is that there are places in central Pennsylvania where we don't have access to affordable high-speed Internet.

That got boiled down into a tweet (by Phil Elliot of Time Magazine):

"You cannot get cell coverage for mile," Clinton says of the places that voted against her.

Weigel says that reporters knew that Clinton had "a quarter-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan" to help people out in those places that beat the heck out of her, but they nevertheless went for the easy snark that fit the "firmly established narrative of Clinton and Trump is that she couldn't connect to rural voters, whereas he was a 'blue-collar billionaire' who made surprising emotional connection."

__________________

* They surely favored Clinton over Trump, but I think at the primary stage they favored Bernie Sanders. But Trump did figure out how to use the media that hated him just by making himself available and speaking in a way that was compulsively watchable. He got a ton of free media — interviews and rallies — and so did Bernie — who used a very similar approach of being available and chattily interesting. Clinton was so guarded, so withholding. Even when she made herself available she seemed unavailable. And there was that meme — did she believe it? — that she is most liked when people don't see her at all.

"Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy."

Said Phil Berger, the leader of the North Carolina senate, and Roy Cooper, the new Governor, in a joint statement about the new bill, repealing House Bill 2.

The new bill would "create a moratorium on local nondiscrimination ordinances through 2020 and leave regulation of 'multi-occupancy facilities,' or bathrooms, to state lawmakers," the NYT reports.

Cooper, a Democrat, beat the incumbent Pat McCrory, a narrow victory that had to do with Bill 2 (and the boycotting of the state that it touched off). Bill 2 had required everyone using a public bathroom in North Carolina to use only the facility that corresponds to the sex designated on their birth certificate.

Cooper also said:

“I support the House Bill 2 repeal compromise that will be introduced tomorrow. It’s not a perfect deal, but it repeals House Bill 2 and begins to repair our reputation.”

"The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by 'intelligence' like candy. Very un-American!"

Tweets Trump, quoted in a NYT article titled "Trump Condemns Leaks to News Media in a Flurry on Twitter."

Also in the flurry:

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign”...

And:

“Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia”

Underlying NYT article on the front page right now, "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence." Excerpts from that:

The intelligence agencies... sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation....

The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort.... Mr. Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the officials’ accounts in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,” he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.” He added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”

"Mountain gave birth to a mouse: all accusations against Russia are based on ‘confidence’ and assumptions. US was sure about Hussein possessing WMD in the same way."

Tweeted Alexey Pushkov, a member of the defense and security committee of the Russian Parliament’s upper house, quoted in the NYT in "Russians Ridicule U.S. Charge That Kremlin Meddled to Help Trump."

Also, this tweet, from Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the state-funded TV network RT:

“Aaa, the CIA report is out! Laughter of the year! Intro to my show from 6 years ago is the main evidence of Russia’s influence at US elections. This is not a joke!”

"American intelligence officials have concluded that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, 'ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election'..."

"... and turned from seeking to 'denigrate' Hillary Clinton to developing 'a clear preference for President-elect Trump,'" the NYT reports.

The conclusions were part of a declassified intelligence report, ordered by President Obama, that was released Friday afternoon. Its main conclusions were described to Donald J. Trump by intelligence officials earlier in the day, and he responded by acknowledging that Russia sought to hack into the Democratic National Committee, but said nothing about the conclusion that Mr. Putin had sought to aid his candidacy, other than that it had no effect on the outcome.

You can read the report PDF here. 

The NYT headline says "C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence" and I'm instantly skeptical about whether what's in the article supports that headline.

Because there's so much fake news these days.

Ever notice how cries of "fake news!" slip out of the news when the news outlets have some fake news to slip over? Oh, first let me show you Trump's new tweet:

Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016

Now, let's get down to the work of checking to see whether the NYT really presents evidence to justify that headline. I'm reading every word of the rather long article but will only give you the actual evidence offered for the proposition that the Russian government intervened in the U.S. election for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win. There's a lot of material in the article that is not about that at all. I'm excluding that, which is padding if the headline is the correct headline. Go to the link if you want to see what it is.

The first relevant material comes in the 16th paragraph: The DNC's servers and John Podesta's email account were hacked and a lot of damaging and embarrassing material was released onto the internet.

Next:

American intelligence officials believe that Russia also penetrated databases housing Republican National Committee data, but chose to release documents only on the Democrats. The committee has denied that it was hacked.

So here's the crucial disputed question of fact: Were the GOP servers also hacked? We're not told what evidence supports the belief that the GOP servers were also hacked, but the GOP says they were not. Yet some "intelligence officials believe" it was. Why? Where's the "swell of evidence" you were going to tell me about?

Even if that fact were nailed down, there would still be more leaps needed to get to the conclusion. First: Was there any embarrassing material? What? If I knew what, I could begin to think about the next question: Why would embarrassing material be withheld? All I can see from the supposed "swell of evidence" here is an assumption that if the DNC was hacked, the GOP committee was also hacked, and that if bad material was found in the DNC server, bad material would also be found in the GOP server, and since we only saw the DNC material, there must have been a conscious decision — by whom?! — to leak only the DNC things and that decision must have been made to help Trump win. That's not evidence itself, only inference based on evidence.

Finally, there are a few paragraphs about why "Putin and the Russian government" might be thought to prefer a Trump presidency to a Clinton presidency. Trump and Putin have given each other some compliments.

That's no swell of evidence! That's a lot of leaping guesswork. And this is nothing more than I already read in the article the NYT put out on December 9th, which I put effort into combing through and rejected for the same reasons I'm putting in this new post.

This might be the biggest fake news story I've ever seen!

Squirreled away at the end of the article is the admission that people at the FBI are skeptical about the conclusion. An unnamed "senior American law enforcement official" told the NYT that "the Russians probably had a combination of goals, including damaging Mrs. Clinton and undermining American democratic institutions" and that "any disagreement between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and suggested that the C.I.A.’s conclusions were probably more nuanced than they were being framed in the news media." The NYT observes that the FBI holds itself to "higher standards of proof," since its work is geared toward prosecuting criminal cases in court, but: "The C.I.A. has a broader mandate to develop intelligence assessments."

I'm staring at that headline again. You said there was a "swell of evidence." Shouldn't that satisfy the FBI's higher standard rather than the good-enough-for-the-CIA standard? I think I see the reason for the different standards. The CIA is concerned about what might happen in the future. But why are we trusting them in an FBI/CIA disagreement about what happened in the past?

The very end of the NYT article is about the FBI investigating "numerous possible connections between Russians and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including former Trump aides like Paul Manafort and Carter Page, as well as a mysterious and unexplained trail of computer activity between the Trump Organization and an email account at a large Russian bank, Alfa Bank." This investigation began in the summer and seems to have played out by September and October — for reasons that are "are not entirely clear" and that the FBI won't talk about.

Speaking of embarrassing material... that headline, with that content... in the NYT. So awful.

I'm distracted into reading about the word "swell" in my dictionary (the OED). One usually reads of a swell of the sea or of music or emotion.  "Fenc'd no where from the least Surge or Swell of the Water," wrote Daniel Dafoe. "And up the valley came a swell of music on the wind," wrote Tennyson.  "Of all the actors who flourished in my time... Bensley had most of the swell of soul, was greatest in the delivery of heroic conceptions, the emotions consequent upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy," wrote Charles Lamb.

But swell of evidence...

Swell is the talk of upwelling emotion and romanticism.

Swell is a tell.

"Attorneys for President-elect Donald Trump have moved to block the vote recount in Pennsylvania, adding to complaints filed to stop similar proceedings in Michigan and Wisconsin."

Politico reports:

"Despite being no more than a blip on the electoral radar, [Jill] Stein has now commandeered Pennsylvania's electoral process, with an eye toward doing the same to the Electoral College," the complaint filed Thursday states. "There is no evidence -- or even an allegation -- that any tampering with Pennsylvania's voting systems actually occurred."

"A Dane County judge on Tuesday denied a request... to require all votes in Wisconsin’s presidential election to be recounted by hand...."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

The 56 counties who have said they already plan to do full or partial hand recounts, account for about 60 percent of all votes. Another 13 counties, including Milwaukee, are only doing optical scan recounts, and the other three haven’t settled on a plan.

State law sets a high bar for a judge to order a statewide hand recount. The law says the candidate seeking one must give “clear and convincing evidence” that using machines to conduct a recount will produce incorrect results and that there’s a “substantial probability” that recounting the ballots by hand or another method will produce a more correct result — and change the outcome of the election.

The judge, Valerie Bailey-Rihn, said the standard was not met, even though there were a couple experts who tried to cast doubt on the machines:

“A hand recount is going to provide a more accurate result because it will not be affected by any kind of cyber-security attack that might be compromising the voting machines,” testified J. Alex Halderman, a cyber-security expert and professor at the University of Michigan.

Philip Stark, director of the Statistical Computing Facility at the University of California-Berkeley, testified that a statistical analysis of small voting wards in Wisconsin showed numerical anomalies that bear further scrutiny — and could be a sign of malicious attempts to alter the vote totals. The testimony was based on an analysis by Walter Mebane, a statistical expert and University of Michigan professor.

But:

Elections Commission director Michael Haas [testified]... that extensive measures are taken by local election officials to restrict unauthorized people from gaining physical access to the machines. State officials have said those machines are not connected to the Internet, meaning a potential cyber-attacker likely would need to access them in person.

Scott Walker's view of the Wisconsin recount.

Let's not pretend #Recount2016 is anything more than a fundraising scheme for the Green Party. pic.twitter.com/UWJarRvg6r

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) November 29, 2016

ADDED: I refrained from retweeting this, but I am blogging it. Blogging and retweeting feel distinctly different to me. Is it the same for you? For me, to retweet would have more of a feeling of endorsement. Blogging it feels more as though I'm saying: Here's what Scott Walker says. Let's talk about it. I'd have to say something more to reveal anything about what's in my head. But I will say a little more. I'm not trying to be coy. What I'll say is that Walker's tweet is pithy but too extreme. He's not only saying there is absolutely no other reason for the recount than to raise money for the Green Party. He's also saying that you'd have to be pretending to point out another motivation. I'm sure I'm not just pretending when I say that the recount effort is also a scheme to get good publicity for the Green Party and to hurt Donald Trump by keeping resistance to the outcome of the election alive.

ALSO: As long as I'm embedding Scott Walker tweets....

Jim Berg & I out hunting. We were walking back to connect with our friend Tom Balistreri. pic.twitter.com/uQ7Bz66uWh

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) November 21, 2016

"It’s almost as if Jill Stein, a regular on Russia Today TV, is pursuing a strategy calculated to foment chaos."

"But we’re not hearing anything about that from the people who’ve been seeing Russkis under their beds for months."

And...

"So if you believe that Putin hacked the election, you also have to believe that Barack Obama is in on the coverup: 'White House denies that Russia hacked election for Donald Trump win.'"

4 Pinocchios to Trump's claim that millions voted illegally (and without them, he'd have won the popular vote too).

WaPo's Glenn Kessler tries to find some evidence to look at and finds none.

It seems to me that it's Donald Trump's responsibility to point to the evidence, otherwise he simply sounds like an agent of chaos. Why would he want to do that, right when his interest should be in appealing to our desire for resolution, peace, and a smooth transition? He shouldn't be weird! I know he won the presidency by resisting advice that he behave in a way conventional people perceive as normal, but he's not running for the presidency anymore. If he acts as though he thinks he is, he's helping his piddling adversaries. Why?!

Kessler seems to guess that Trump picked up the accusation from "purveyors of false facts as Infowars.com."

Back when Trump was trailing in the polls and was threatening to dispute the election results because the system was “rigged,” we’ve previously given Trump four Pinocchios for making a number of bogus claims about alleged voter fraud.

Among other things, he falsely asserted that illegal immigrants were tipping the results in elections, based on a misinterpretation of disputed data. Even the researcher who produced the data said Trump was taking his findings out of context: “Our results suggest that almost all elections in the U.S. are not determined by non-citizen participation, with occasional and very rare potential exceptions.”

Kessler doesn't really know what Trump knows. How can you know he's lying until he reveals his sources of information? Kessler is jumping the gun. And I'm not very satisfied by a quote from a researcher who admits that he thinks some U.S. elections are determined by non-citizen participation!

ADDED: Could Trump have been joking? It kind of makes sense as a joke, but I'm only arriving at this idea the morning after I read the tweet, so... not much of a joke. Maybe Trump will shout "November Fools!" later today.