Did Trump lie?

The Republican audit tally of the 2020 Arizona election results have been released. It confirmed that Joe Biden won the state — by 360 more votes than were certified after the election.

Yet, Donald Trump, in a recent rally in Perry, GA, stated that the audit proved that he won the state of Arizona.

Trump’s statement got me to wondering what Trump supporters would say to what appears to be an obvious lie. I decided to ask for reactions from website participants on my old college’s general message forum.

According to a political survey done earlier in the year by the website managers, 52.3 percent of the members taking the survey marked that they favored Donald Trump in the 2020 election; 31.3 percent said they favored Joe Biden.

Here are the questions I posed:

1. Do you Trump supporters believe Trump’s claim that the audit proved he won the Arizona election? If so, why?

2. If Trump lied about the audit, do you still believe the 2020 election was stolen?

3. If you know Trump lied about the Arizona recount results, what does this imply about his view of his supporters?

Three pro-Trump supporters, one Libertarian, and one anti-Trump participant responded.

One of the Trump supporters stated: “It found 360 more votes for Mr. Biden. But it found massive fraud, too.” This writer expected the Arizona election vote to be “decertified and criminal prosecution… undertaken as of some of the [Arizona State] Senators are requiring.”

Another Trump supporter responded about the election as a whole: “I also believe from many accounts I have read, that many of these votes that were counted…were cast illegally by people not eligible to vote for lack of citizenship or because of a current felony record…. I do not retain one ounce of trust for a single Democrat in office. Anywhere.”

The third Trump supporter said: “… There are multiple tens of thousands of ballots that should not have been counted due to multiple voting and unsigned envelopes containing ballots, counted, contrary to Arizona Law.”

The Libertarian wrote: “I suspect Biden won at the ballot box fair and square, but I’m not going to die on that battlefield—either way…. Whether or not the votes were fraudulent, the control of information was. This is exactly what all the Democrats said the Russians did for Trump, but the partisans from within had the more powerful platform.”

The dissenting voice stated: “Even though the recount was done by a conspiracy-spewing nut job, the bottom line is still the bottom line. If there’s serious doubt about the election, why did they conclude that Biden won? ….The real joke is the big lying clown still spewing the Big Lie. And the millions of people who still choose to believe him…. Or is he just cover for passing election reform legislation that somehow seems to favor the Republican Party? If you can’t win fair and square, cheat.”

This person noted that the chief political correspondent for Fox News, Bret Baier, announced that Biden had won the election, showing that it wasn’t just the progressive left legitimatizing the Arizona audit.

Arizona’s ABC Eyewitness News quotes board chairman Jack Sellers, who made these statements about the audit:

“Maricopa County’s Republican-led board of supervisors pointed to the draft Thursday night, saying that it underscores the reality that the county ran an accurate election.

“You don’t have to dig deep into the draft copy of the Arizona Senate/Cyber Ninja audit report to confirm what I already knew — the candidates certified by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Governor, Secretary of State and Attorney General — did, in fact, win….”

“’This means the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters….That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise.’”

If there was cheating, fraud, and ballot stuffing, the blame falls with the elected officials at many levels of the Arizona State government, most of whom are Republicans. If that is the case, then we don’t really have a representative democracy.

A final word: none of the respondents answered my third question: “If you know he [Trump] lied about the Arizona recount results, what does this imply about Trump’s view of his supporters?”

My answer to this question is that Trump views his supporters as ignorant, stupid, evil, or some combination of all three.