When Donald Trump was asked at the end of the second debate to name one thing he respected about Hillary Clinton, he said that he respected the fact that “she fights hard, doesn’t quit and she doesn’t give up.” Recall again in the last debate, when moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump if he was willing to accept the results of the election, no matter what they were.

Trump replied that he would “tell [us] at the time,” and “keep [us] in suspense.” Clinton responded by calling the statement “horrifying.” It now seems that this statement was quite ironic.

Recently the Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, in her efforts to recount votes in key battleground states, has claimed that she is not doing so for the purposes of benefitting a single candidate.

In fact, she says that she doesn’t expect her recount to change the outcome at all, instead citing the concerns of voter irregularities and cyber-attacks. For those not up to date with this leftist newspeak, “irregular” is a quirky euphemism for “illegal.”

In other words: Stein is concerned about voter fraud – the same voter fraud that Trump openly complained and warned about for months before the election.

Also, coincidentally, she is concerned about the same voter fraud that our friends on the left insist almost never happens, and that if it did happen, would certainly never impact the result of a presidential election. In fact, Stein has exactly as much evidence of fraud after the election as Trump did beforehand: that is, none at all.

While we are on the subject of coincidences, notice that Stein has only petitioned for recounts in states that Trump won, like Pennsylvania, where Trump won by 78,000 votes.

She did not, however, call for a recount in Minnesota, which Clinton won by less than 44,000 votes, Nevada, which she won by 26,000 votes, or New Hampshire, which she won by less than 3,000 votes. By the way, the funny thing about cyber-attacks is that they don’t work on paper ballot systems, which the state of Michigan uses, yet Stein is calling for a recount there anyway.

Stein may claim that she’s not “With Her,” but she sure isn’t Against Her. Actually, the Clinton campaign has also joined in the call for a recount, so it might be more accurate to say that they are With Each Other.

Then again, it’s possible that Stein isn’t doing this as part of some conspiracy to steal the election from Trump, disrupt the Electoral College vote, or deny him his 270 vote majority so that the election can go to the House of Representatives, in effect poisoning the well of his legitimacy before his term even starts.

Stein could be in it for something far more rational: money. She has raised twice as many funds over the course of this stunt than she did during her actual presidential campaign.

Of course, in characteristic fashion, Trump did his part to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by tweeting that he had concerns about the election as well.

He felt that if one discounted all of the illegal aliens that voted, he probably would have won the popular vote in addition to the electoral.

Then again, only Trump could see all of the ways something could go wrong, weigh it against the one thing that could go right, and take the plunge anyway. And somehow, his luck hasn’t run out yet.

Marcel Gautreau is the President of the Hofstra Students for Liberty

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