Summary
Donald Trump and his team are attacking media outlets like Politico and The New York Times for reporting that his 2024 election victory over Kamala Harris was narrow, not a “landslide.”
Trump won by 1.6 points and failed to secure a majority of the popular vote, a smaller margin than Hillary Clinton’s over him in 2016.
Despite these facts, Trump and his allies continue to tout his win as “historic” and “dominant,” aiming to bolster his political mandate amid criticisms that his victory was less decisive than claimed.
Who fucking cares though? If I get caught cheating on an exam, it doesn’t matter if I would have passed anyway, does it?
That’s a false equivalence.
If someone got caught cheating on an exam, there’s undeniable proof that they cheated. They should be punished accordingly.
If someone won student union presidency by 100 votes, and it turns out that 70 opposition votes were “lost,” it doesn’t immediately change anything. You can’t say for certain whether the winning candidate had anything to do with that vote manipulation since we have the whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing that society is built on. Investigations should still take place and guilty parties should face consequences, but there’s nothing we can do to punish the winning candidate if it turns out that basketball club unilaterally acted to suppress votes because they thought they would be given a bigger budget under that candidate.
The unfortunate reality is that Trump would just be able to walk away without consequences if there was vote manipulation. Unless he was stupid enough to order his MAGA cult into manipulating or suppressing Democrat votes directly, his lawyers would just claim it was the unsanctioned actions of a few individuals.