A day after President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders on major issues—and appeared in an ABC News interview in which he justified lying about voter fraud and served as his own state television propagandist—the cable networks are focused on perhaps the least significant news item of the past 24 hours: Tiffany Trump’s voter registration status.
State election records show the president’s 23-year-old daughter is currently registered to vote in both New York City and Philadelphia, NBC News reported. (Until Wednesday, Steve Bannon was similarly registered in New York as well as Florida.)
The relevance here is that Trump has pledged to investigate the nonexistent problem of widespread voter fraud in the United States, singling out “those registered to vote in two states”:
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
But being registered to vote in two states isn’t illegal. It doesn’t suggest you’re voting in two states, which is against the law. Trump is trying to make double registration sound nefarious, and the media shouldn’t follow his lead.