Donald Trump Is Seeing Red

The recount started by third-party candidate Jill Stein seems to have gone mainstream. That's right, the Democrats are now participating too, as the Clinton campaign's chief counsel made clear in a post on Medium. Her camp is not overly hopeful, but Marc Elias made clear there would be Clinton lawyers will be on hand to observe the recount "to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides." If anything he sounded skeptical of the whole matter, but that didn't stop Donald Trump from overreacting. Hillary Clinton participating with the recount made Trump angry — at a level we haven't seen (so much of) lately.

And it comes as a bit of a surprise (if anything that Trump says or does can surprise you). But if you think about it, Trump's Twitter has been somewhat less outrageous since the election — if not exactly presidential. After his brief hiatus he started making overtures of unity and then did some self-aggrandizing, pointing out all the people who had congratulated him. Besides some attacks on The New York Times, things seemed to be going relatively well for his tweeting self-control. But forget all of that, now that Clinton and Stein seem to have teamed up against him (at least in Trump's eyes).

After Stein filed in Wisconsin, Trump released a statement that wasn't terribly kind to Stein, but it also left out Clinton besides acknowledging she'd conceded and said it was time to work together. "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 in the statement. But he was saving his anger for the next development: Clinton's involvement.

When that became clear, the president-elect took to Twitter late night Saturday and early morning Sunday. Not only did he diss the Democrats, who he said "when they incorrectly thought they were going to win, asked that the election night tabulation be accepted. Not so anymore!" Then he went on to explain that Clinton had conceded and that "nothing would change." And then it gets worse.

After that, he replayed Clinton's comments from one of the debates and her speech the morning after the election to try and paint her as hypocritical. But this was the truly insane accusation: "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." There has been absolutely no evidence to support this, of course, and if anything he only supports the need for a recount.

Trump may not be happy, but the recount will go forward anyway. Wisconsin has until Dec. 13 to certify their election results. And if Stein successfully files in Michigan and Pennsylvania, we could all be on the edge of our seats — if not quite as angry as the president-elect.