Donald Trump wants to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election when an agonizing recount battle between Texas Governor George Bush and Vice President Al Gore stretched into December.
On Saturday evening, the president-elect denounced a Wisconsin recount mounted by Jill Stein as a “scam,” urging the nation to follow Hillary Clinton’s advice and “accept this result and then look to the future.”
The Washington Examiner reports,
The rare post-Thanksgiving announcement from the president-elect comes after news broke that the Clinton campaign will back Stein’s recount effort in Wisconsin. Calls for a recount have increased as Clinton’s lead over Trump in the popular vote surpasses two million ballots.
Once a vocal critic of the Electoral College, Trump relied on the institution to defend his victory.
“It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day – the most of any Republican since 1988,” the incoming executive wrote. “And we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide—the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984.”
On election night, Trump torched Clinton’s firewall, winning upset victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But he won those blue states with thin red margins, a cumulative total of about 107,000 votes. Recounting those ballots could be embarrassing for the Republican and call into question his legislative mandate.
The businessman turned president-elect wasted little time before trashing Stein’s effort as ridiculous and labeling it “a scam by the Green Party.”
“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount,” Trump wrote.
Read the full story at Washington Examiner
