Thanks cutworm,

I guess you missed this earlier today(stuff below).

Blaming it on dishonest people surrounding Trump and misleading him is a fascinating defense............considering that most people that wouldn't support Trumps lie got fired or had to quit. ........or got threatened with being hanged (-:

Trump being mislead by a bunch of people and NOT being the leader would be like insisting that rain causes clouds and not clouds cause rain.

This is not a which  came first, the chicken or the egg mystery.

 Anybody looking at the facts knows with clarity that Trump led this right out of the gates  and vehemently REJECTED anybody that contradicted him. 

In fact, that defense is especially absurd today because if he was misled, then why, on June 17, 2022 is he ranting still about those same things that he was supposedly misled to believe?

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/85856/#85954

+++++++++++++++++++++

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/85856/#85949

Bookman: Evidence builds that Trump knew he lost, so attempted coup was criminal

https://georgiarecorder.com/2022/06/16/bookman-evidence-builds-that-trump-knew-he-lost-so-attempted-coup-was-criminal/

In a televised hearing by a U.S. House select committee this week, we got a pretty definitive answer to that particular question:

• Then-Attorney General Bill Barr testified via video that he had told Trump repeatedly and emphatically, in language too graphic to print here, that there was no evidence of significant vote fraud in Georgia or anywhere else. Barr’s replacement as attorney general later told Trump the same thing.
• Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, testified that he too told Trump that they had lost fair and square.
• Matt Oczkowski, the Trump campaign’s top data analyst, reaffirmed to Trump that he had lost fairly.
• Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, also told him he had lost.
• Trump’s appointee as head of U.S. cybersecurity, Chris Krebs, investigated voting-machine fraud charges and announced on Twitter that “in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” Trump can’t claim he didn’t know about that tweet, because he fired Krebs the same day, also via Twitter, citing the tweet as the reason.
• A similar fate befell BJay Pak, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for northern Georgia. In testimony made public by the House committee this week, Pak said he had reported to his Justice Department superiors that he could find no evidence of election fraud in Georgia. For that, Trump demanded his resignation.
• And of course, in their now-infamous phone call with Trump, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff also patiently walked through all the detailed evidence proving that there was no evidence of voting or election fraud.

So yes, Trump knew that he had lost. Trump knew because many well-informed, credible fellow Republicans – many of them his own appointees – had dared to tell him so on repeated occasions, citing actual evidence and data. The House committee has made that clear.

It's not what or how many times he was told. 

It's what he believes. According to this ex-prosecutor.

I would contend that he still believes.

In a criminal case the standard for conviction is 12 out of 12 jurors saying beyond a reasonable doubt.

Thank you cutworm!

It's what he believes.

That would be a good defense in some situations but 

 This is the president of the United States, not somebody thats in and out of the State Hospital for being delusional. There's a  basic, reasonable standard assumption that  a person at this level can tell the difference between winning and losing an election.....especially when many top aids told him clearly and every iota of authentic data did too. 

The main reason that tens of millions of Americans also believe that he won is THAT HE CONVINCED THEM. There's no data or evidence anywhere that suggests he won. The entire non evidence based narrative about Biden stealing the election was conjured up by Donald Trump, who got a team of people to support him with his Big Lie scheme.

You could get away justifying him thinking that he won and not be accountable..........until he took the very unacceptable actions of trying to subvert the system by doing things like pressure Secretary of States and state legislators to not certify and to "find" the amount of votes he needed to win that state.

Or pressure Mike Pence to not certify.

In nobody's world is that a justifiable response/action to thinking that you won.

You still have to follow laws and the Constitution.

The same side impressed with how sharp Trump is for recognizing all the massive election fraud (and effectively convincing 40 million republicans of it) ....also want us to believe he's not smart enough to tell definitively  whether he won this election or not?

This is EXTREME rationalizing and changing the theory with ad hoc additions as we go to justify whatever bad behavior Trump committed even if it contradicts earlier parts of the theory.

The position  from his supporters must be one of these but not both:

1. He's got a brilliant mind that totally understands the difference between winning and losing as a result of  election fraud and he's right that Biden stole the election (which means he's accountable for all of his actions)

OR

2. He not accountable for any of his actions, including the illegal ones because  he's delusional and can't tell the difference between winning and losing.