Trump
tells supporters they won’t have to vote in the future: ‘It’ll be fixed!’
Former
president implores Christian supporters to vote ‘just this time’, then ‘in four
years, you don’t have to vote again’
Ramon
Antonio Vargas
Sat 27 Jul
2024 09.44 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/27/trump-speech-no-need-to-vote-future
Donald Trump
has ignited alarm among his critics after telling a crowd of supporters that
they won’t “have to vote again” if they return him to the presidency in
November’s election.
“Christians,
get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more,” the
Republican former president said on Friday night at a rally hosted in West Palm
Beach, Florida, by the far-right Christian advocacy group Turning Point Action.
“You know
what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my
beautiful Christians,” he said with a slight shake of his head and his right
hand pressed against the left side of his chest.
He added: “I
love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have
to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
Trump’s
remarks – delivered not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and home – were
immediately met with consternation in some political quarters.
The
constitutional and civil rights attorney Andrew Seidel, for instance, replied
to video of Trump’s comments circulating on X by writing: “This is not subtle
Christian nationalism. He’s talking about ending our democracy and installing a
Christian nation.”
Actor Morgan
Fairchild added in a separate X post: “But … what if I want to vote again?? I
was always raised that we get to vote again! That is America.” And NBC legal
commentator Katie Phang said: “In other words, Trump won’t ever leave the White
House if he gets re-elected.”
Trump’s
comments on Friday came months after he remarked that he would be “a dictator
on day one” if given a second four-year term in the White House. He has
repeatedly made known his admiration for authoritarian leaders, including
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
And a former White House aide reported that Trump once said Adolf Hitler –
whose Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust amid the second
world war – “did some good things”.
Meanwhile,
the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has detailed plans to aim
retribution at Trump’s actual and perceived enemies – whether politicians or
bureaucrats – should he be re-elected.
Experts on
authoritarianism warn the public to take Trump seriously when he speaks in that
manner. And before Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign on 21 July and
endorsed Kamala Harris to succeed him in the Oval Office, the Democratic
president repeatedly sought to portray Trump as an existential threat to
American democracy.
Trump’s
supporters have tried to blame that rhetoric for the failed 13 July
assassination attempt that targeted the former president at a political rally
in Pennsylvania. The FBI said on Friday that a bullet – whether whole or
fragmented – hit Trump in one of his ears during that day’s shooting, which
also killed a rally-goer and wounded two other spectators before a Secret
Service sniper shot the gunman to death.
Yet many
pointed out how Trump’s remarks on Friday seemed to be an indication that the
Republican nominee for president had no plans to stop making explicit threats
against democratic norms, including elections themselves.
“Oh. Trump
just cancelled the 2028 election,” liberal political commentator Keith
Olbermann wrote on X in a post containing a video clip of the ex-president’s
remarks on Friday.
Caty
Payette, the communications director for Democratic US senator Martin Heinrich
of New Mexico, added in a separate X post: “When we say Trump is a threat to
democracy, this is exactly what we’re talking about.”
However, not
everyone is turned off by the rhetoric to which Trump resorted on Friday. An
Ipsos poll published in June and commissioned by the Earth4All non-profit and
the Global Commons Alliance found that 41% of Americans believe “having a
strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections” is a
very good or fairly good way to govern.
Some younger
people and higher earners in particular showed support for that sentiment,
according to the poll, said Owen Gaffney, co-leader of Earth4All.
Trump easily
clinched the Republican nomination for November’s election despite having been
convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the New
York state prosecution involving $130,000 paid to adult film actor Stormy
Daniels after she alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him. He has
also been grappling with charges of illicitly trying to reverse the outcome of
the 2020 election that he lost to Biden – efforts that were buoyed on 1 July
when a US supreme court with three Trump appointees ruled that he enjoys
immunity from being prosecuted for any acts deemed official.
And, among
other legal issues, he has faced multimillion-dollar civil penalties for fraud
and a rape allegation that a judge determined to be substantially true.
Even if
Trump wins a second White House term in November, the 22nd amendment of the US
constitution – which was enacted in 1951 – would prevent him from serving as
president beyond early 2029.
Simply
proposing to change that amendment would require approval from two-thirds of
both congressional chambers. Then, three-fourths of the US states would need to
approve the change.
Republican
lawmakers for now have a narrow majority in the US House. The Democrat
opponents have a slim majority in the Senate.
A poll
released on Friday by the Republican-friendly Fox News network showed Trump in
a tight race with Harris, the US vice-president, in key swing states that could
decide November’s election. Before Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential
election, polls generally showed Trump had built relatively comfortable leads
in a number of key swing states.
This article was amended on 27 July 2024. A
part of Trump’s speech that was unintelligible was deleted.
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