As the final weekend before election day next Tuesday comes to a close, Donald Trump is campaigning in three states to deliver his final thoughts to voters in three swing states. Speaking at a rally this morning in Lilitz, Pennsylvania, the former President stated that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House because he and his team “did so well,” before abruptly digressing to another topic. Donald Trump has changed position on this issue in just the last couple of months, saying in September on the Lex Fridman Show that he had lost the election “by a whisker,” which infuriated some sections of his base. Speaking more recently on the Joe Rogan Experience, Trump appeared to switch back, saying that the Democrats had “used COVID to cheat” in 2020.
Trump then went on to joke about the members of the media being shot, pointing out their position close to the stage and saying that if someone behind them wanted to shoot him, they “would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don’t mind that so much.” It is the second time Trump has mentioned shooting his adversaries this week, as just a few days ago he told Tucker Carlson in an interview that Liz Cheney should have guns “trained on her face” since she’s a “war hawk.”
At a rally later on in Kinston, North Carolina, Trump did not play with violent rhetoric, but instead repeated long-debunked statements sensationalizing illegal immigration, claiming that Democrats are soft on immigration policy and the migrants crossing the southern border because “they want to put them on the voting rolls.” Even when immigrants obtain legal residency, which itself is not immediately granted, the road to citizenship and the right to vote is years-long, begging the question as to how this would be useful as a political strategy for the long- or short-term. There has been no evidence of any illegal immigrants voting fraudulently en masse, let alone that Democrats are facilitating it. Trump, who owns the social media platform Truth Social, also went back to a statement he has made in the past that prisons in the Congo are “emptying their jails” and sending inmates over here, a claim he has also made in the past about Venezuela, although experts say that there is no evidence to support such claims for either country.
Trump is finishing off his rallies tonight in Macon, Georgia, and will be speaking tomorrow in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on the eve of election day.
