You-Know-Who and his supporters are going around suggesting the presidential election is "rigged" but only if Hillary wins. If D.T. wins, of course, it's proof that the system is sound and trustworthy and Kosher. Isn't this exactly backwards?
The overwhelming majority of polls show Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead. Even the few that show Trump ahead by a point or so nationally suggest he would lose at the Electoral College level. And aren't the polls kind of a "check" on the actual vote count? If the polls show Hillary winning by 4-8% and then the vote count on Election Day shows Hillary winning by 4-8%, don't the two sources kind of validate each other?
On the other hand, if the polls showed Hillary winning by a large margin and then Trump won by a large margin, wouldn't that indicate that one or the other might have been…well, maybe not rigged but that here was something amiss?
The last few presidential elections, there were pollsters and analysts like Nate Silver who called every state right or only missed by a fraction. How could they have done that if the polls had been rigged? Someone would have to not only have rigged the ballot counting in a whole lot of states but also rigged dozens of polls that were conducted independently of one another. Even the Fox News poll now has Hillary ahead by about four points. If Hillary had the power to rig the Fox News poll, don't you think she'd have the power to get Sean Hannity fired?
Of course, I understand that when Trump and his minions talk about "rigging," they're also talking about the press not covering the news the way they think it should be covered. I wonder if any politician of the last hundred years has ever not felt the press hasn't covered the news properly. Some of them try to act statesmanlike and above it all and not complain out loud. Some of them probably think that if you complain about the press, they'll hammer you more so it's better to act like you respect them.
In any case, I think it's dishonest to talk about getting slammed by the media as "rigging." Rigging is when someone tampers with voting machines or has dead people vote and that almost never happens. Disseminating negative stories about a candidate is not the same thing. That does happen and it's not even illegal. Often, in fact, it's accurate.