President Donald Trump on Thursday night pledged to have law enforcement monitor polling places during the elections on November 3, dialing up his bogus claims of election fraud to another extreme.
During an interview, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Trump if he planned to send “poll watchers” to the sites “to know that it’s a real vote from a real American.”
“We’re gonna have everything,” the President replied. “We’re gonna have sheriffs and we’re gonna have law enforcement and we’re going to have hopefully U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody. And attorney generals.”
Though Trump has repeatedly peddled the false claim that mail-in voting leads to election fraud, his comments indicated that his baseless fearmongering on the topic now extends to in-person voting as well.
As he continues to trail Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in the polls, Trump has been trying to preemptively paint Biden’s potential victory as illegitimate due to voter fraud and signaling that he won’t accept the election results.
“You have to see what’s happening,” Trump said when asked earlier this week if he’d allow a peaceful transition of power if he lost the race, claiming that “you’re never going to have a fair election” with mail-in voting.
Listen to Trump below:
Trump: "We’re gonna have sheriffs and we’re gonna have law enforcement" monitor polling sites during the elections. pic.twitter.com/zSnYSRtq1c
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) August 21, 2020
Gonna have the Coast Guard there too?
Voter Intimidation = Voter Suppression = Unlawful
And it cannot be said often enough…
The party that is falsely saying there is a voter fraud is the party that is committing election fraud!
Help I have fallen and I can’t get up…
It is my understanding that in a number of states including Florida, it is against the law for law enforcement officers to be present within a polling place unless called there by election officials due to a crime being committed against voters or officials.
Pretty hard to prove a crime when there is no crime to prove.
Keep it up, Donnie! At this rate, you’ll have us pissed off enough to get 80% turnout. (I wanted to leave some room for him to depress his own turnout.)
As another poster said: We’ll crawl over broken glass and a COVID river to vote for Biden.