Trump’s rhetoric on elections turns ominous as voting nears in the presidential race
With early voting fast approaching, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric has become increasingly menacing, with a pledge to prosecute anyone who “cheats” in the election, in the same manner he believes they did in 2020, when he wrongly claimed He won and attacked those who stuck to their accurate vote counts.
He also told a gathering of police officers last Friday to “be on the lookout for voter fraud,” an attempt to involve the police that would be legally questionable.
Trump has claimed, without providing evidence, that he lost the 2020 election solely because of fraud by Democrats, election officials and other unnamed forces. On Saturday, Trump promised that this year, those who cheat will be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” if he wins in November. He said he meant everyone from election officials to lawyers, political staffers and donors.
“Those who engage in unconscionable conduct will be sought out, apprehended and prosecuted to a level of justice sadly never seen before in our country,” Trump wrote in the post on his social media network Truth Social, which he later also posted on X, the site once known as Twitter.
The former president’s warning – he prefaced it with the words “STOP & “DESIST” is the latest surge in rhetoric resembling that of authoritarian leaders.
To make it clear, Trump lost the 2020 elections to President Joe Biden in both the Electoral College and the popular vote, where Biden received 7 million more votes. Trump’s own attorney general said there was no evidence of widespread fraud, Trump lost dozens lawsuits challenge the results and a Associated Press investigation showed that there was no fraud that could have influenced the elections. In addition, several reviews, tells And controls in the battlefield states where Trump contested his loss all confirmed that Biden had won.
Trump, who spoken warmly about authoritarians and recently mused that “sometimes you need a strong man,” has already promised prosecute his political opponents if he comes back to power. His allies have drawn up plans to federal prosecutors better able to tackle the president’s opponents.
In a possible conservative outline for a new Trump administration, known as Project2025A former Trump Justice Department official writes that Pennsylvania’s top election official should have been prosecuted for a policy dispute, namely deciding that voters there should be given the chance to correct signature errors on their ballots.
Trump has rejected Project 2025, but his rhetoric matches that example, said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and Biden White House aide who now teaches law at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
“He’s showing us more and more what kind of president he hopes to be, and that means using the Justice Department to punish people he disagrees with — whether they’ve committed crimes or not,” Levitt said.
Levitt said he was skeptical that a Trump Justice Department could simply bring charges against people who contradicted his election lies. But he and others said the proposal was dangerous nonetheless.
“Threatening people with punishment for cheating is deeply troubling when ‘cheating’ simply means disagreeing with the outcome of the election,” said Steve Simon, a Democrat who is Minnesota’s secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, in a post on X.
According to Trump’s campaign team, the former president only talked about the importance of fair elections.
“President Trump believes that anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who engage in election fraud. You can’t have a country without free and fair elections,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump has already made threats against people who did not engage in illegal activity during the 2020 election. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg, donated more than $400 million to local election offices in 2020 to help them deal with the pandemic. In a book released earlier this month, Trump threatened that Zuckerberg would ” spend the rest of his life in prison “if he makes any further contributions.
Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in an interview Monday that Trump’s comments have caused election officials, who have faced years of threats over Trump’s false claims of corruption in 2020, to increase their vigilance and security planning.
“That’s a level of vitriol and threats that we haven’t seen before, and it’s very alarming and concerning,” Benson said. “We’re concerned that individuals will read that rhetoric and take it upon themselves to exact the revenge before the election — or immediately after, if their candidate doesn’t win — that their candidate has called for.”
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that Trump’s rhetoric was dangerous: “This is not who we are as a country. This is a democracy.”
Stephen Richer, the Republican clerk of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has been repeatedly attacked by Trump and his supporters for her insistence on the accuracy of that county’s 2020 vote count, went to X to point out an election official who has been charged for her actions that year — Tina PetersThe former Mesa County clerk in Colorado was convicted in August of helping activists gain access to her county’s voting machines to prove Trump’s lies.
“She was on your side of all of this,” Richer wrote to Trump in his message. Earlier this summer, Richer was defeated in the Republican primary in his bid for re-election.
Trump’s call for police officers to monitor polling places in case of fraud in November came Friday as he addressed a meeting of the Fraternal Order of Policean organization that supports him.
“I hope you can watch and you’re everywhere. Watch for voter fraud. Because we’re winning. Without voter fraud, we’re winning so easily,” he told the officers. “You can keep it low by just watching. Because believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you.”
What he suggests may conflict with several federal And stands laws against voter intimidation – some of which specifically ban uniformed officers According to Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center, people who go to the polls are not allowed to go to the polls unless they are responding to an emergency or casting their own ballot.
According to Diaz, these laws are a result of the country’s troubled history of police officers abusing their power to prevent black people from voting.
“We have to keep that history in mind when we think about law enforcement presence at the polls,” he said. “Even the best-intentioned officers who are truly there just to keep people safe without any ill will, their presence can be perceived by voters differently than they intended.”
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Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Detroit and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.