CNN's Chris Cuomo Allowed Trump's Voter Fraud 'Source' to Own Himself

From Esquire

Gregg Phillips is a walking advertisement for a logic class. Phillips, who heads a conservative advocacy group, is the "source" for President Donald Trump's claim that 3 million people voted illegally in the last election. Phillips tweeted this claim, without evidence of any kind, so of course the leader of the free world picked it up and trumpeted it as fact in his ongoing, thoroughly bizarre attempt to undermine the legitimacy of an election he won.

Phillips seems eager to make a name for himself, so he joined Chris Cuomo on CNN's New Day this morning to explain how he was absolutely positive 3 million people cheated our election system, and you should be, too, although he doesn't want to show you the proof because he's still "checking" it.

Initially, Phillips tried to run through a bunch of jargon about algorithms, but Cuomo didn't bite. "If I say I know," Cuomo said, switching roles for a second, "And then you say, 'Great! Prove it.' And I say, 'I can't, because I'm not done checking whether or not I'm sure, it sounds unconvincing."

"Unconvincing" is being kind. It sounds like you found a conclusion you liked and are now trying to gin up evidence to prove it-or stall until people get distracted and forget.

"It's not different than, say, a poll," Phillips said later. "You guys quote polls all the time."

"It better be a lot different," Cuomo said, exasperated. "Because that is a guestimate. A poll is a guestimate."

"But they've actually talked to people."

Yes, Gregg, they talked to people to ask their opinion for an opinion poll. You are stating that, in cold hard reality, 3 million people committed a felony and undermined the legitimacy of a democratic election for President of the United States. To wit:

"It better not be a survey," Cuomo said. "It better be a fixed number of votes that were wrongfully cast. Because it can't be a guess, it can't be an estimate, because this is about the legitimacy of a democracy. You have put it on the line saying it is illegitimate. You've said our process was illegitimate, and you can prove it. Now you're saying, 'well, we're not there yet, we're still checking.'"

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He added that all the statistics that we do have-that were made public, because the people that gathered them did not have disdain for the scientific method-indicate voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

"The minimus, small-the number of prosecuted cases in the dozens. Over a billion votes were surveyed, and they came back with marginal results. You're saying you can prove 3 million people. The only other person who says that is the President of the United States, so you've got to prove it."

How's that for a wake-up call?

Eventually, after Phillips repeatedly guaranteed 3 million people voted but declined to offer any evidence, Cuomo got down to the foundations of this rolling shitshow: "Why would I believe your conclusion when you won't show me your method and means and analysis?"

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. It is not on Cuomo to prove Phillips doesn't have evidence there was widespread fraud, it is on Phillips to produce the evidence to back up his claim. If I tell you there's a magic unicorn galloping through space between Earth and Mars-to paraphrase a very famous analogy-it is my responsibility to prove to you that it is true. For me to demand that you prove there isn't a magic unicorn galloping through space between Earth and Mars is functionally absurd.

When Phillips says, "I know. You just don't believe that I know," it's both nonsense and a great example of this kind of magical thinking. Cuomo doesn't believe him because Phillips has given him no reason to. Phillips' belief that something is true has no actual bearing on whether it is true.

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Eventually, Phillips defaulted to a previous defense: the helpless bureaucrat. "I'm just a guy," he told Cuomo. Not anymore, champ. "For us, it's tedious" to check that the evidence he cited is acccurate, he added. "We're volunteers."

Then Phillips gave away the game: He hinted that maybe the investigation would switch to the Justice Department under Attorney General nominee Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III-noted friend of voting rights-so that a federal government that has declared outright opposition to transparency can come to its own conclusions about whether we need a crackdown on voter fraud. And so we learned that this, like much of the other noise about voter fraud from the last weeks-and, in truth, the last eight years-is really about laying the groundwork to justify voter suppression.

"We are as precise as we need to be," Phillips said. I guess we'll have to take him at his word.

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