What did Donald Trump do today?

He let a lie about voter fraud get so far away from him that he started talking about needing photo ID to buy groceries.

Yesterday, in what was unmistakably a backlash against Trump, Democratic candidates were elected across the map in a rout. Barely nine months into his second term, Trump is testing new lows in unpopularity, and voting populations he'd made inroads with in 2024 put up eye-popping numbers for Democrats.

Trump, who still claims to believe that the 2020 election was "rigged" against him, obviously had the elections on his mind today. He wrenched his answer to a question about the ongoing government shutdown from a discussion of the filibuster to the (non-existent) issue of voter fraud, but ended up in a place that is bizarre even by his standards:

…We should start tonight with 'the country's open, congratulations,' then we should pass, uh, voter ID, we should pass no mail-in voting, we should pass all the things that we wanted to pass—make our elections secure and safe, because California's a disaster, uh, many of the states are disasters, but can you imagine when they vote almost unanimously against voter ID, all we want is voter ID. You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID. But for voting, they want no voter ID, it's only for one reason, because they cheat. We would pass that in fifteen minutes. …Mail-in ballots make it automatically corrupt.

You do not need to show photo identification to purchase groceries or gas in the United States, or anywhere else. It's not clear why Trump thought anyone would believe that—but then, it's not clear Trump has ever in his life had to buy his own gas or groceries.

Trump, to the horror of Republican party officials who know how disastrous it would be for them, has long called for an abolition of mail-in or absentee voting (except when he does it). Earlier this year, he renewed his (empty) threats to ban it, saying that he'd gotten the idea from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. That appears to be what he is talking about when he mentions votes "unanimously against voter ID." 

But, of course, even in the eight states (plus DC) where all voting is conducted by mail, voters still have to register, and there are actually more safeguards against fraudulent voting by mail than in person. There are a handful of states where in-person voting is allowed without a photo ID, but even in those states the "affidavit ballots" have other requirements that allow poll workers to verify an address match to the voter file records, and special requirements for first time voters or registering voters that do include photo ID.

Outside of Trump's conspiracy-theory attempts to explain away his 2020 election loss, people intentionally casting fraudulent ballots is almost completely unheard of. For example, the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation conducted a study of reported voter fraud in past elections. In just one of the states they examined, Pennsylvania, they found 39 individual reports of voter fraud out of more than 100 million votes cast, meaning that 0.0000388% of ballots cast over the course of three decades might have been illegally cast.

Trump claims to believe that millions of undocumented immigrants all cast illegal ballots, all for his opponents. But in spite of the fact that all states keep meticulous records of who is eligible to vote and who has cast a ballot, he's never been able to find even one such illegal voter.

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be possible for anyone to be so far out of touch with everyday reality that you think grocery stores are checking ID before they'll sell to you.