The hefty warnings – depending on false information and racist tropes – predicted a bitter fall campaign as Trump tried to reverse a slide in the election. And they presided over an electoral battle after elections, as Trump announced a potential loss in advance with warnings of fraud.
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if these elections are rigged,” he said during a stop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the second of several events he uses this week to mark the Democrats’ all-digital convention. to counter.
He appeared to inject a new scheme intended to deprive Monday of a second term: a “deep state” he claims could announce a coronavirus vaccine on November 4 – the day after the election.
“I do not need that,” he said during his late-afternoon speech in Wisconsin.
However, it was his statement that a loss in November could only come as a result of election fraud that was most striking. Trump has previously warned of a ‘rigged election’, including Monday morning, as he gave unfounded warnings about post-in-vote and drop-boxes for ballot boxes. Combined with a statement that his loss would only be a result of cheating, Trump is voicing democratic fears that he will refuse to accept the election results.
Elsewhere in his speech, Trump said he should be given a ‘resume’ in the first instance, and falsely claimed that his first campaign was spied on by the previous administration. And at another point he joked that he could stay in the office for “16, 20” years.
Though remarkably made, those remarks only give the impression that Trump is preparing, at least, to challenge the November results if they do not let him win. Taken together, the comments suggest that Trump is actively working to undermine the results of an election that polls currently show he is losing.
He weighed heavily on the mantle “law and order” he adopted in the wake of racially motivated protests earlier this summer, and Trump declared Monday that it was “crunch time” for a campaign that many of his advisers urged him to focus more intensively than Election Day nearby.
He escalated his attacks on Biden to dramatic new levels as he hopes to stump whatever rival he can enjoy from this week’s convention.
“Do you want to be ruled by the radical left mob or do you want to stand tall as free men and women in the largest country on Earth?” Trump asked, hesitating equally pessimistic remarks earlier Monday in Minnesota.
“We will have an election that is all about the survival of the nation,” Trump told a crowd gathered in an airport hangar south of Minneapolis for a scaled-down version of one of his signature rallies.
“Joe Biden is the puppet of left-wing extremists who are trying to clear our borders, eliminate our police, indoctrinate our children, remove our heroes, take away our energy,” Trump added, claiming that Biden sought ” To replace American freedom with left-wing fascism. “
“Fascists,” he said. “They are fascists.”
Series of stops
Unwilling to give Democrats the week to convene their presidential nomination convention, he planned to hold a series of stops in the battlefield states on Thursday, including near Biden, Pennsylvania, the same day that he expected to formally accept the Democratic nomination.
Trump also has plans to travel to Arizona, saying Monday that he would stop in Iowa to investigate storm damage.
Once its trademark political event, massive arena meetings appear off-limit for the foreseeable future amid concerns over the still raging coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Trump flies from airport to airport and greets crowds gathering in hangars that are partially outside. Initially resistant to the idea of smaller gatherings, Trump eventually came up with the idea when advisers told him that this season could ultimately be the only kind of political event.
That’s more than Biden is trying for now. Instead, he has convened online events and will, along with every other speaker, appear remotely at his nominating convention this week.
Republicans believe the week-long event is getting heavy media attention and attention from voters, part of the reason Trump’s campaign is sparking a counter-programming effort, which includes Trump’s trip along with a massive digital ad purchase that is a rare four-day takeover includes YouTube banner.
Vice President Mike Pence and the children of the President also plan campaign events.
Convention under wraps
Meanwhile, the RNC and Trump campaign remain silent about their own convention plans for next week. They have yet to publish a list of speakers or even the place where the speeches will take place.
Trump said Monday in Wisconsin that he would deliver his own acceptance speech from the White House and the Republican National Committee has applied for a permit to hold a fireworks display over the Washington Monument on August 27, the day Trump is expected to accept it. delivery address.
“We are going to give a real speech on Thursday, next Thursday,” he said. “That, you will hear – live from the White House. And we have enough to say.”
Trump’s advisers have been working on drafting his speech, which, like his speeches on Monday, will delve deeper into the legal and order issues the president has adopted as his call for elections.
It was rhetoric he began to scale in June amid protests and injustices following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis when a White police officer nodded in an arrest. Trump did not visit the site of his death on Monday, but held an event with business owners affected by the unrest.
In comments later, Trump rebuked Biden for not providing enough support to police and touts his own decision to postpone refugee settlement during the pandemic, uttering “terrorism has hit nations like Syria and Somalia.”
Minnesota has a large community of Somali immigrants – including Rep. Ilhan Omar, a progressive firework that has attacked Trump as not patriotic enough.
In his remarks, Trump called Omar by name and claimed she was “a terrible woman who hates our country.”
This story was updated Monday with additional developments.
CNN’s Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.
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