Former President Donald Trump is once again using suggestions of voter fraud to fire up his supporters – pointing to bad spots in Pennsylvania at the top of a campaign event Tuesday just a week before Election Day.
‘It’s going very well. There are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught,’ Trump said in what his camp billed as a statement to the press from his Florida club.
He was referencing criminal investigation in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where election officials flagged 2,500 voter registration forms for potential fraud.
Republican officials called it an organized effort but also said it had been contained. It related to batches of registrations that had been dropped off in bulk, with some containing false names, suspicious handwriting, signatures that didnt match, or wrong address information.
Trump in 2020 repeatedly pointed to irregularities and claimed fraud as part of his effort to overturn the election results. The effort included repeated statements about fraud risks before the election, with his allies directing many of their complaints against Pennsylvania.
Trump regularly speaks at his campaign rallies about a plan to swamp the vote to overwhelm what he calls Democratic voter fraud.
Still, Trump underlined that the election itself is going very well, by which he meant how his campaign to regain the White House is faring.
Trump said the election was going very well but said there had been bad spots in Pennsylvania
Were leading, I believe, in all seven swing states, Trump said, on a cay when a new CNN poll had Harris leading him by a single point in GOP-leaning Arizona while Trump led her by a single point in Nevada. Both are within the polls error margin.
In a race that is extraordinarily tight, Trump holds four leads that are less than 1 percent of the vote in RealClearPolitics voting averages in battleground states.
Trump also revisited his theory, a staple at his campaign rallies, that the process that got rival Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket amounted to a coup.
The way they took that away from him was not was not right. It wasnt right. Shouldnt have happened that way. They walked in. They said: "Were taking it away." They took – they stole the presidency of the United States, Trump said.
You can call it a coup, you can call it whatever, but they stole. They went in like taking candy from a baby, and cant have that. And shes running on a campaign of immoralization, and really a can of campaign of destruction, he added.
Trump claimed they stole the presidency for Kamala Harris, although Democrats have expressed enthusiasm for her and support for President Biden stepping back
Trump said there were serious things caught in Pennsylvania, after Lancaster County Commissioner Ray DAgostino, the chair of the elections board spoke about 2,500 voter registration forms flagged for potential fraud.
He also called it a campaign of absolute hate and linked it to two assassination attempts against him, although the campaign had no connection.
As Trump sometimes rightly points out, more than 14 million people voted for President Joe Biden in the primaries. He voluntarily stepped back after a pressure campaign following his debate disaster, and party leaders quickly reunified around his vice president.
Harriss favorability rating is 72 percent among Democrats – tied with how party members viewed Barack Obama in 2008 and tied for first among Democratic candidates going back to 1960, according to Gallup.
The event had been set up as a prebuttal for Harris, who is speaking on the Ellipse Tuesday – the same place Trump spoke on January 6.
He spoke for nearly an hour, and did not take questions. He rambled through a range of topics, including Michelle Obama, who he said was very nasty to me the other night, called Harris a total train wreck, inveighed about the fake Russia hoax, and said there was love in that room at his Madison Square Garden rally.
He called it an absolute love fest and mocked Democrats for comparing it to a 1939 Nazi meeting.