Trump’s election rhetoric becomes worrisome as presidential vote approaches

As early voting approaches, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rhetoric has grown more ominous with his promise to go after anyone who “cheats” in the election in the same way he believes happened in 2020, when he falsely claimed he won and attacked those who confirmed the accuracy of their vote counts.

He also told a police rally last Friday that they should “watch out for voter fraud,” an apparent attempt to enlist law enforcement that would be legally dubious.

Trump has claimed, without providing evidence, that he lost the 2020 election solely because of cheating by Democrats, election officials and other unspecified forces. On Saturday, Trump vowed that this year, those who cheat “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” if he wins in November. He said he was referring to everyone from election officials to lawyers to political aides and donors.

“Those engaged in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never before seen in our country,” Trump wrote in a message posted on his social network Truth Social, which he later also posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

The former president’s warning – which he prefaced with the words “CEASE AND DESIST” – is the latest wave of rhetoric that mimics that used by authoritarian leaders.

Election experts and several state and local election officials quickly condemned the former president’s comment, which they saw in part as an attempt at intimidation as polls prepare for the start of voting.

Barb Byrum, a clerk in Ingham County, Michigan, said she believes Trump’s message is an attack on democracy aimed at driving election officials out of the profession.

“But I know we will not be intimidated,” said Byrum, a Democrat. “We are public servants committed to ensuring that every registered voter has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote, and we will do that.”

To be clear, Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden in both the electoral college and the popular vote, where Biden received 7 million more votes. Trump’s attorney general himself has said there is no evidence of widespread fraud, Trump has lost dozens of lawsuits challenging the results, and an Associated Press investigation showed there was no level of fraud that could have tipped the election. Additionally, multiple reviews, recounts, and audits in key states where Trump contested his loss have all confirmed Biden’s victory.

Trump, who has spoken warmly about authoritarian regimes and recently said that “sometimes you need a strong man,” has already pledged to pursue his political opponents if he returns to office. His allies have drawn up plans to allow federal prosecutors to better target the president’s opponents.

In a possible conservative blueprint for a new Trump administration known as Project 2025, a former Trump Justice Department official writes that Pennsylvania’s top election official should have been sued over a political dispute — ruling that voters in that state have the ability to correct signature errors on their mail-in ballots.

Trump has disavowed Project 2025, but his rhetoric fits that pattern, said Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department official and Biden White House staffer who now teaches law at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.

“He’s showing us more and more what kind of president he hopes to be, and that includes using the Justice Department to punish people he disagrees with — whether they’ve committed crimes or not,” Levitt said.

Levitt said he was skeptical that Trump’s Justice Department would be able to simply bring charges against people who contradict his election lies, but he and others said the suggestion was nonetheless dangerous.

“Threatening people with punishment for cheating is deeply disturbing if ‘cheating’ simply means you don’t like the outcome of the election,” Steve Simon, a Democrat who is Minnesota’s secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said in a post on X.

The Trump campaign said the former president was simply talking about the importance of clean elections.

“President Trump believes that anyone who breaks the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including criminals who engage in election fraud. Without free and fair elections, there can be no country,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for his campaign, said in a statement.

Trump has previously made threats against people who apparently did not engage in illegal activity during the 2020 election. In 2020, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg, donated more than $400 million to local election offices to help them cope with the pandemic. In a book published earlier this month, Trump threatened Zuckerberg that he would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he made further donations.

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, said in an interview Monday that Trump’s comments prompted election officials, already reeling from years of threats from Trump’s false claims about corruption in 2020, to increase their level of vigilance and security planning.

“This is a level of vitriol and threats that we have never seen before, and it is very alarming and concerning,” Benson said. “We are concerned that individuals will read this rhetoric and take it upon themselves to exact the revenge before the election — or immediately after, if their candidate does not win — that their candidate has called for.”

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was dangerous: “This is not who we are as a country. This is a democracy.”

Stephen Richer, the Republican county clerk for Maricopa County, Arizona, who has been repeatedly attacked by Trump and his supporters for arguing that the county’s 2020 vote count was accurate, took to X to single out an election official who was indicted for her actions that year: Tina Peters. The former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk was convicted in August of helping activists access voting machines in her county to try to prove Trump’s lies.

“She was on your side in this,” Richer wrote to Trump in his message. Earlier this summer, Richer was defeated in the Republican primary in his bid for re-election.

Trump’s call for police to monitor polling places for fraud in November came Friday as he addressed a rally of the Fraternal Order of Police, an organization that has supported him.

“I hope you can watch and you’re everywhere. Watch out for voter fraud. Because we’re winning. Without voter fraud, we’re winning so easily,” he told the officers. “You can limit it just by watching. Because believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you.”

What he’s suggesting could violate several federal and state laws against voter intimidation — some of which specifically prohibit uniformed workers from going to polling places unless they’re responding to an emergency or voting themselves, according to Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center.

Diaz said the laws stem from the country’s difficult history of law enforcement abuses to prevent black people from voting.

“We need to remember this history when we think about the presence of law enforcement at polling places,” he said. “Even the best-intentioned officers, who are there solely to keep people safe with no ill intent, can be perceived by voters in a different way than they intended.”

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Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Detroit and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.