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Trump Is Now Openly Describing How He’ll Steal the Next Election

He also dangled pardons for Jan. 6 rioters.
Former President Trump speaks during the 'Save America' rally at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, Jan. 29, 2022 in Conroe, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Former President Trump speaks during the 'Save America' rally at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, Jan. 29, 2022 in Conroe, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump spent his weekend eliminating any remaining doubt that he wanted to steal the 2020 election. 

In a Sunday statement, Trump criticized Democrats and “RINO Republicans” like “Wacky Susan Collins” who are supportive of reforming the more than century-old Electoral Count Act. Collins and other centrists in the Senate are in the early stages of reform that could increase the threshold for objections to various states’ electoral votes, among other reforms, according to the Hill

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“Actually, what they are saying, is that [former Vice President Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away,” Trump said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”

Despite more than a year of pushing conspiracy theories of widespread electoral and voter fraud, there is no legitimacy to Trump’s claims, and all evidence has shown that President Joe Biden was the rightful winner of the election. 

During a Saturday rally in Conroe, Texas, Trump promised pardons for supporters who rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the same morning he gave a speech calling on supporters to “fight like hell” to keep him in the White House and march to the Capitol to protest the certification of the election. 

“If I run [in 2024] and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” Trump said Saturday. “We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”

Trump also singled out prosecutors, including those who are investigating his businesses in New York and his attempt to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into changing the vote totals to hand him Georgia’s electoral votes, calling them “mentally sick.” The prosecutors in the places he mentioned–New York Attorney General Tish James, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg–are all Black. 

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“If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in, D.C, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere,” Trump said. “Because our country and our elections are corrupt. They’re corrupt.” 

Willis wrote a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Sunday asking for assistance in securing government buildings in Atlanta after Trump’s comments, the Washington Post reported

​​“We must work together to keep the public safe and ensure that we do not have a tragedy in Atlanta similar to what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Willis said. She maintained that “my staff and I will not be influenced or intimidated by anyone as this investigation moves forward.”

Rep. Liz Cheney, the conservative Republican who’s been targeted by Trump for voting to impeach him twice and joining the House committee investigating Jan. 6, said in a Monday tweet that Trump’s statements over the weekend show he feels no remorse for what happened last year. 

“Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the Jan 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election,” Cheney tweeted. “He’d do it all again if given the chance.”

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