Politics

Donald Trump Finally Weighed in on the Recount Effort

November 26th 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has some harsh words for Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein after she fundraised several million dollars to successfully file for a recount in the state of Wisconsin.

"This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing," Trump said Saturday in a statement.

He continued:

"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— 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."

The Republican nominee urged everyone to accept the results of the election. He said that Stein was merely trying to “fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount.”

Trump is not the only one who has been skeptical of Stein’s intent.

Based on screenshots of Stein's website, Mic's Mathew Rodriguez has reported that the cost of attorney fees for the recount that she listed on her website along with original fundraising goal had changed without explanation, resulting in Stein asking for more money than she originally said she needed. Rodriguez also cast doubt on how any surplus of money would be spent, given that Stein had only vaguely said that it would be used for other “election integrity efforts.”

For Stein, who has long been a harsh critic of the two-party systems monopoly on elections, this could mean spending the money in a way that allows the Green Party to break into the next major election instead.

As it stands, Stein has promised to pursue efforts to file for additional recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan where the margin between Trump and Clinton are statistically slight. A lawyer with the Clinton campaign said Clinton would participate in the recount efforts in order to “ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.”

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