Andrew Bolt: The two things the Left must accept about Trump’s defeat to stop US falling apart
Biden’s win was not what many on the Left or in the media expected, but they now must accept crucial facts for the US to move forward, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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The jeering Left must accept two things about Donald Trump’s defeat to save the United States from tearing itself apart.
First, Trump was not “repudiated”. He won more votes than any past president, including Barack Obama.
Second, when Trump now claims Joe Biden won only by cheating, he’s just doing what the Democrats did to him in 2016.
Never forget these two things, because this was not the win that many on the Left or in the media expected. This was not the massive rejection of Trump by an electorate sick of his alleged lies, division and racism.
In fact, Trump set a new record of votes for a president — more than 70 million, pipped only by Biden’s even more impressive 74 million.
Look also at who voted for him. Trump was unfairly vilified as a racist, yet won a bigger share of non-white votes than any other Republican candidate in 60 years.
Trump’s support among blacks went up to 18 per cent. A third of Latinos voted for him.
Damning Trump’s base as racists and gun-toting crazies may make the Left feel superior, but will tick off many millions of decent Republican voters.
That is not just bad for an America that’s already been torn apart by race riots and political violence, mostly from the far Left.
It could also backfire badly on the Democrats in elections over the next four years.
Remember, the new President is a 77-year-old Democrat who already looks doddery. Biden also faces the opposition of a Senate that the Republicans will almost certainly control for another two years.
But if Democrats must show humility in victory, so should Republicans. That’s going to take a hell of a lot more character, and so far Trump has shown little.
“I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” he tweeted furiously on Sunday, as he spreads the myth that his election-night lead disappeared over the next days of counting thanks to “major fraud” by Democrat polling officials.
“You just don’t lose leads like that without corruption,” insisted Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, warning that Trump will fight Biden’s victory in the courts in swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.
This I-wuz-robbed story sure helps Trump. He’s a braggart who needs an excuse for losing. He also need his supporters to get angry enough to donate enough not just for his legal challenges but his campaign debt, and maybe even another campaign in four years.
Yes, the fraud myth helps Trump, but it damages America. It’s horrified the leaders of democracies such as Australia, France, Britain and Canada, which in a loosely co-ordinated effort on Sunday all hailed Biden as the winner.
They know it’s preposterous to claim that Democrat cheating at the polling booths was so big that it robbed Trump of a win in the three or four states that made the difference.
True, it was suspicious and wrong for Pennsylvania to keep vote observers from the Republicans seven metres or more from the counting of the ballots. That should be challenged, along with every serious report of cheating.
But what evidence has Trump actually got? The best example Giuliani gave was of 120,000 votes suddenly added to Biden’s count in Wisconsin at 3am on the night of the election.
That turned out just to be the addition of the count in Milwaukee, a Democrat stronghold that voted nearly 80 per cent for Hillary Clinton four years earlier.
Then there was the viral claim that more people voted in some key areas than were officially registered. But those registration numbers were outdated.
Trump is doing huge damage by feeding such conspiracy theories. America can’t go through another four years of millions of Americans thinking their president is a fraud and election cheat.
But spare me the hypocrisy of the Leftists who now screech in fury that Trump is crying “fraud!”
Didn’t they themselves claim Trump was a fraud who colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election?
For four years the Democrats, with the help of many in the media, painted Trump as an illegitimate president. Now they demand Trump not play the same dirty trick on them?
Please learn: when you baselessly attack a democratic result, you set a very dangerous example.
It is now up to Republicans to be better losers than the Democrats were four years ago. It will stick in the throat of many.
But do it they must. And for that, the media must give Trump voters the respect denied them for so long.
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