Quid De Cogitatione? Glenn Rose
Last month I wrote about the touting of the notion that Donald Trump had won the 2024 election by a “large majority of the voters.”
My research had shown that, “The last presidential election was razor thin in Trump’s favor. He received 77,302,580 votes to Kamala Harris’ 75,017,613, a margin of 49.8% to 48.3%,” and, “According to the University of Florida Election Lab, approximately 245 million Americans were eligible to vote in the 2024 general election [while] nearly 90 million didn’t.”
“Of registered voters, Trump got [only] 31.5%; Harris [only] 30.6%.”
For whatever reasons, not voting for anybody topped both: 37.9%!
I always research a statement that I offer as a fact. When I learned there were still people saying that “… Trump was elected by a vast majority of the voters,” I had to reflect. W as my research too shallow? Did I miss legitimate accountings of the tally that contradicted my work?
Upon doing more thorough research, I found these accountings of the 2024 vote: Wikipedia, C.N.N., and Pew Research: Trump 77,302,580 (49.8%) Harris 75,017,613 (48.3%) American Presidential Project: Trump 77,303,568 (49.8%) Harris 75,019,230 (48.6%) The A.P. and N.Y. Times: Trump 77,304,184 (49.9%) Harris 75,019,617 (48.4%) These were close enough for me to believe what I had reported was accurate, if not right on target.
So where are people getting this notion that Trump received “a vast majority of the voters”?
I figured Fox News. But Fox News reported Trump got 77,304,184 (49.9%); Harris 75,019,617 (48.4%), the same as the New York Times and The Associated Press – pretty much what other news sources reported.
So again, where are these people who insist on declaring that a majority of 152,000,000+ voters (a total just over 2,000,000+) get them “a vast majority” bragging right?
Is a 1.5% win a crushing victory? Is it an overwhelming mandate to take our country in a different direction? A direction away from protecting less fortunate people, not just in our own country, but in countries suffering war, oppression, and poverty?
Let’s revisit January 6, 2021. Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump 81,283,495 votes to 74,223,755 votes, a difference of 7,059,748. That’s 51.4% (a clear majority) to 46.9%, all numbers as reported by Fox News (check it on the Internet), and three times more than Trump’s 1.5% in the 2024 election.
That 2020 margin of 4.5% was close enough for Donald Trump to protest fraud and rally his vassals to overturn those majority voters by marching to the Capitol and “fighting like Hell.”
Yet in 2024 Trump’s 1.5% margin is an unassailable “vast majority of the voters”?
What a warren of illogic! Where were these people, who are willing to misrepresent facts and figures to achieve their own ends, on January 6th 2021?
Were they attacking the United State Capitol, breaking windows and defecating on desks? Were they assaulting police officers with mace and truncheons, sending many to the hospital, all at the behest and urging of Donald Trump, while he sat in the White House refusing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America”?
Or were they home cheering in front of their television sets as the insurrectionists attacked our government and the police officers who strove to protect it?
There are those willing to believe all this misinformation – alternative facts, as it was called in “Trump 1” – because it is what they are told to believe … by Donald Trump.
In a Time magazine interview in December 2024 Trump said, “[T]he beauty is we won by so much. The mandate was massive.”
In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference Trump noted correctly that he earned 77 million votes, then falsely added his vote total was “actually much more than that” because unnamed people “cheated like hell.”
Trump had been preparing his backers for a close loss and most assuredly would have “fought like hell” if he had lost by that 1.5%.
Those who are sentient know that Trump is not candid and only proclaims what he wants others to believe, usually something that flatters or extols him.
He never adds supportable facts.
But those who are in the know, who disseminate what they know are lies?
Well, they’re just liars. I’ve seen the question offered “Do we need a No More Lies Day?”, intriguingly juxtaposed with pure, unsubstantiated conjecture and fabrications.
I most assuredly agree, although, why only a day? Couldn’t we expand that to all 365 days a year and the one extra day on leap year? Is being truthful only one day a year really acceptable?
We need to be able to believe in each other, although when someone demonstrates the compunction to sidestep the truth by making a point without verifiable proof, we must learn to dismiss anything they offer as lacking in veracity.
It is prudent to ignore avouchments from individuals who never offer honest facts.
Where we need integrity the most is in the leaders of our government. When they become the authors of lies, those who can’t and won’t believe what their own eyes see and their own ears hear will easily become their accomplices.
The Truth must be loudly heralded and vehemently defended.
It is the rich soil in which our country has grown over the last 250 years to, at least to now, a position of respect and admiration.
What Ronald Reagan proclaimed, “A shining city on a hill.”
