Donald Trump keeps making the same weird claim to his supporters that he doesn’t need more votes. On Wednesday, he repeated the idea at a rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, telling his supporters that “our primary focus is not to get out the vote.”
Trump emphasized that his goal was “to make sure they don’t cheat,” adding that Democrats “are going to cheat like hell to win the election because they have no bounds, they have no bounds.”
Trump sets the stage for his second coup attempt: “They are gonna cheat like hell to win the election.” pic.twitter.com/6rd2263Dgx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 21, 2024
Trump has been using this odd message for weeks, saying on Fox and Friends last month that his instructions to his supporters are: “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes.” Less than a week later, he told a group of supporters, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” He then doubled down on those claims to Fox’s Laura Ingraham after she pressed him for clarification. Even going back to October, he said something similar at a New Hampshire rally.
It seems that the former president and convicted felon wants to cast doubt on the coming election, especially if results don’t appear to be going his way. Considering that he lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, that is a strong possibility. Trump may be thinking of riling up his supporters early and then turning them loose like he did at the Capitol in 2021.
Or, as he said in North Carolina, he’s been so fooled by all of the Trump signs he’s seeing that he really thinks he has the votes locked up. That could be another sign of cognitive decline.