Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) issued a striking warning on Tuesday: by lying about the size of Kamala Harris’ campaign events, Donald Trump is gearing up to deny the 2024 election results.
The Vermont senator weighed in after Trump falsely claimed over the weekend that Harris is using artificial intelligence to fake images of thousands of people at her campaign rallies, and that “nobody” showed up to one in Detroit.
“Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid. When he claims that ‘nobody’ showed up at a 10,000 person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness,” Sanders said in a statement.
“Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses,” he added. “If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are ‘fake’ and ‘fraudulent.’”
Trump has reportedly been frustrated by the enthusiasm and media attention for Harris in recent weeks, complaining about having to face her in November instead of President Joe Biden. He’s been stewing about her crowd sizes online and fantasising that Biden will somehow attempt to wrest back control of the presidential nomination at next week’s Democratic convention in Chicago.
Trump’s allies have been urging him for weeks to stay focused on Harris’ record in Biden’s administration and the progressive stances she took during her 2020 Democratic presidential primary bid, to little avail.
“You’ve got to make this race not on personalities,” former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican, California) told Fox News on Monday. “Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position when it comes to, what did she do as [California] attorney general on crime? … What did she do when she was supposed to take care of the border as a czar?”
In 2020, Republicans led by then-President Trump sought to throw out the presidential election results and disenfranchise millions of Americans based on false allegations of widespread voter fraud, culminating in a violent riot at the US Capitol.
This time around, the Republican Party is laying the groundwork to contest the November election based on unfounded fears of undocumented immigrants voting in federal elections ― something that’s already illegal.
“We cannot allow the many millions of illegal aliens they allowed to cross our borders harm our citizens, or disrupt our elections. We will not allow it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican, Louisiana) declared at last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Senator Mike Lee (Republican, Utah), who participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, urged House Republicans this week not to agree to fund the government next month unless the chamber passes a bill against illegal voting which, according to election experts, is so exceedingly rare as to not be an issue.
“It is the last chance for Democrats (and a few Republicans) to sabotage President Trump’s next term, fund Biden’s disastrous policies, and leave the door open to illegal voting,” Lee claimed on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.
In his statement on Tuesday, Sanders warned that a Trump victory in November put the very foundations of democracy at risk.
“This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about,” he said of Trump’s campaign falsehoods. “This is why we must do everything we can to see that Trump is defeated.”