Trump promises to pursue “unscrupulous behavior” in this election

“WHEN I WIN, those people who cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, including long prison terms, so that this miscarriage of justice never happens again,” Trump tweeted Saturday night. once again casting doubt on the integrity of elections, even though fraud is incredibly rare.

“Please be aware,” he continued, “that this legal exposure extends to lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught and prosecuted at levels sadly never seen before in our country.”

Trump’s message is his latest threat to use the presidency to seek retribution if he wins a second term. There is no evidence of the kind of fraud they continue to insist affected the 2020 election; in fact, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration said he lost fairly.

Just a few days ago, Trump himself admitted in a podcast interview that he indeed “lost by a whisker.”

While Trump’s campaign advisers and allies urged him to keep his focus on Harris and make the election a referendum on issues like inflation and border security, Trump in recent days has veered off course.

On Friday, he delivered a stunning statement to the news cameras in which he brought up a series of previous allegations of sexual misconduct, describing several in detail, even as he denied the allegations from his accusers. Earlier, he voluntarily appeared in court for a hearing on the appeal of a decision that found him guilty of sexual abuse, focusing on his legal problems in the latter part of the campaign.

Earlier Saturday, Trump leaned into familiar grievances about everything from his impeachment to Russian meddling in the 2016 election as he campaigned in one of the most deeply Republican battleground states of Wisconsin.

“The Harris-Biden DOJ is trying to put me in jail – they want me in jail – for the crime of exposing their corruption,” Trump said at an outdoor rally at Wisconsin Central Airport, where he spoke behind a glass wall bulletproof. to the new security protocols following his July assassination attempt.

There is no evidence that President Joe Biden or Harris had any influence on the Justice Department’s or state prosecutors’ decisions to indict the former president.

Trump has eschewed traditional debate preparation, choosing to hold rallies and events while Harris has been holed up in a historic downtown Pittsburgh hotel, working with aides since Thursday.

Harris has so far agreed to just one debate, which will be hosted by ABC.

At the rally, Trump outlined his plans to “Drain the Swamp” — a return to his winning campaign message in 2016, when he ran as an outsider, challenging the status quo. Although Trump has spent four years in the Oval Office, he has vowed again to “take out the corrupt political class” if he wins again and to “reduce the fat on our government for the first time significantly in 60 years.”

As part of that effort, he reiterated his plan, announced Thursday, to create a new “Commission on Government Efficiency” led by Elon Musk, which will be tasked with conducting “a full financial and performance audit of the entire government federal” to eliminate waste. .

After again vilifying the congressional panel investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the nation’s capital by his supporters after his loss in the 2020 election, Trump told the crowd of thousands that he would “expeditiously review the cases of every political prisoner victimized on unjust. by the Harris regime” and signs their pardon on his first day back in office.

Trump has repeatedly defended those who have been imprisoned for crimes, including violent attacks against law enforcement.

And he said he would “completely overhaul” what he called “Kamala’s corrupt Department of Justice”.

“Instead of persecuting Republicans, they will focus on taking down bloodthirsty cartels, transnational gangs and radical Islamic terrorists,” he said.

Harris campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika responded to his comments with a statement warning that if Trump is re-elected, he will “use his unchecked power to go after his enemies and pardon insurgents who have violently attacked Our capitol on January 6”.

Both Harris and Trump have been frequent visitors to Wisconsin this year, a state where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than one percentage point. Several polls of Wisconsin voters taken after Biden withdrew showed Harris and Trump in a close race.

Democrats see Wisconsin as one of the must-win “blue wall” states. Biden, who was in Wisconsin on Thursday, won the state in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes. Trump carried her by a slightly larger margin, nearly 23,000 votes, in 2016.

While Trump was campaigning, Harris took a short break from debate prep to visit Penzeys Spices in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where he bought several spice mixes. A customer saw the Democratic candidate and began to cry openly, while Harris hugged her and said: “We’re going to be fine. We’re all in this together.”

Harris said she was honored to have the support of two major Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming.

“People are tired of the division and the attempts to divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message at the debate would be that the country wants to be united.

“It’s time to turn the page on the divide,” she said. “It’s time to bring our country together, find a new way forward.”

Trump held his rally in the central Wisconsin town of Mosinee, population about 4,500. He is in Wisconsin’s mostly rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in a purple state.

During his speech, he lashed out at Harris in dark and ominous language, claiming that if the woman he calls “Comrade Kamala Harris has four more years, you’re going to be living in (a) full-blown Banana Republic.” ruled by “anarchy” and “tyranny.”

Trump also criticized the administration’s border policies, calling the Democrats’ approach “suicidal” and accusing them of importing murderers, child predators and serial rapists from around the planet.

Many studies have found that immigrants, including those in the country illegally, commit fewer violent crimes than native-born citizens. Violent crime in the US fell again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era peak.

He dismissed warnings from U.S. officials about ongoing Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the November election, including an indictment last week that alleged a media company linked to six conservative influencers was secretly funded by media employees Russian state.

“The Department of Justice has said that Russia may be meddling in our election again,” Trump told the crowd. “And, you know, the whole world laughed at it this time.”

Among those in the crowd was Dale Osuldsen, who celebrates his 68th birthday on Saturday, at his first Trump rally. He hopes a second Trump administration will take on the “cancellation culture” and return the country to its “fundamental past.”

“We’ve had previous administrations that said they wanted to fundamentally change America,” Osulden said. “The fundamental change of America is a bad thing.”

Many supporters drove hours from Wisconsin to see Trump speak. Some even came from further away.

Sean Moon, a musician from Tennessee who releases MAGA-themed rap music under the stage name, “King Bullethead,” dropped his songs from a truck in the event parking lot. As a musician himself, he said Trump’s rallies approximate the experience of a loud concert.

“Trump is a rock star,” Moon said. “It’s incredible. People see that he represents them and the deep state that is trying to kill him and take him out. But he stands strong and represents the normal person.”

Democrats relied on heavy voter turnout in the state’s two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, to counter Republican strength in rural areas like Mosinee and the Milwaukee suburbs. Trump needs to win votes in places like Mosinee to have any chance of reducing the Democratic advantage in urban areas.

Republicans held their national convention in Milwaukee in July, and Trump has made four previous stops in the state, most recently just last week in the western Wisconsin city of La Crosse.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, packed the same Milwaukee arena where Republicans held their national convention last month for a rally that coincided with the Democratic National Convention just 90 miles away in Chicago. Walz returned to Milwaukee on Monday, where he spoke at a Labor Day rally organized by unions.