President Donald Trump launched his convention week with a strong outburst against his rivals from four years ago, warning that voter fraud could deprive him of a second term.
Speaking from Charlotte moments after he was formally renominated as the Republican Party flag bearer, Trump delivered a speech that predicted a legally contested election in November and complained that Democrats were exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to undermine his re-election.
“What they’re doing is using Covid to steal an election. They’re using Covid to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election,” Trump said, to applause from GOP delegates, who were gathering in North Carolina to conduct the formal business of the party convention.
He repeated claims that, should rival Joe Biden prevail, the country would be overrun with violence similar to protests seen this summer in Minnesota and Oregon. He warned that Democrats were seeking to take away guns, religion, American energy production and raised grave predictions about the November vote, saying there were courts and judges across the country “who will hopefully give us a fair call” in a contested election.
“The only way they can take this election away from us is if it’s a rigged election,” he uttered, later warning delegates to “be careful” amid what he cast as a Democratic plot to steal the election: “Don’t let them take it away from you,” he said.
He added that he has told China he would “never let them forget what they did” in failing to contain coronavirus, as he touted his own handling of a pandemic as well as his record on the economy, proclaiming new trade agreements and improvements in unemployment that occurred before the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the nation.
President Trump also offered, in very broad terms, some plans for a second term, including repeating a pledge to release a list of potential Supreme Court judges should additional vacancies occur on the high court.
Mounting the stage to chants of “four more years,” Trump began by inserting a recommendation and immediately launching into a complaint about his last election.
“Now if you really want to drive them crazy, you say 12 more years,” he said, going on to rail against alleged “spying” on his 2016 campaign.
“We caught them doing some really bad things in 2016. Let’s see what happens. We caught them doing some really bad things,” he said. “We have to be very careful because they’re trying it again, this whole 80 million mail-in ballots that they’re working on. Sending them out to people that didn’t ask for them. They didn’t ask, they just get them, and it’s not fair, and it’s not right, and it’s not going to be possible to tabulate, in my opinion.”
Trump went on to claim Democrats “are trying to do it with the whole post office scam, they’ll blame it on the post office. You can see them setting it up. Be very careful and watch it very carefully.”
