Recount is different from rejection of results. It was unclear whether he was anticipating a legal fight or simply planning on ignoring the counts. My guess is that he wanted to lose so that he could focus on making noise and have no responsibility.
I think the whole issue was created to make him look bad. "Hey, if you lose, will you accept the results?" After Gore/Bush, I don't know if anybody would immediately say "Yes" without thinking about the possibility of questionable things happening. Would you accept the results of an election with fraud? Until the election happens, you can't have 100% confidence that you won't think there was some fraud.
A lot of us here have questions about voting machines, people voting who shouldn't, etc. These are natural concerns that should be Hillary's concerns (as they are now) and not just Trump's.
The question was not "Assuming there is iron clad proof of no voter fraud, will you accept the results if you lose?" The answer would almost certainly have been "Yes" in that case. I think all of us on this site are smart enough to assign non-zero probability to the chance that this question was asked WITHOUT the "no voter fraud" disclaimer specifically to elicit the reaction that it got.
...He created the issue.
He spent weeks/months claiming the system was rigged, the election would be rigged, that the only way he could possibly lose was if he was cheated because he was going to win by such a landslide. He kept calling for people to loiter around polling sites with guns to prevent funny business...
That wasn't post-2000 reticence about the preliminary call.
He loaned $45 million and gave less than $10 million, but mostly as in-kind gifts not cash. He said back in 2000 he could run for president and make money from the campaign. I think he succeeded, depending on the interest rate of that loan. He spent a bunch of campaign funds by buying from his own businesses.
> time and money
Maybe he just wanted to be on TV.
Is that illegal?
I thought only Republicans keep continuing the fairy tale of non-citizens voting, which they then use to justify voter suppression of poor people and minorities; which is the actual question this election.
Recount is also different then acceptance.
This recount is purely academic. You would have to alter tens of thousands of votes across several states to change this election's outcome. No harm in being academic I suppose. Hope the millions are worth it.