Mosinee, Wis. — Days before his first and likely only debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump posted a warning on his social media site threatening to jail those who “engaged in unethical behavior” this election, which he said would be heavily investigated.
“When I win, the fraudsters will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including long prison terms to ensure this travesty of justice does not happen again.” Trump wrote late Saturday nightOnce again sowing doubt about the integrity of elections, even though fraud is extremely rare.
“Please be aware,” he continued, “that this legal contact extends to lawyers, political activists, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials. Those involved in unethical behavior will be hunted down, caught and prosecuted at the level, unfortunately. , never seen before in our country.
Trump’s message represents his latest threat to use the office of the presidency to exact retribution if he wins a second term. There is no evidence of the kind of fraud he continues to insist on to damage the 2020 election; In fact, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration have said he’s a total loser.
A few days ago, Trump himself Admitted in a podcast interview That he actually “lost by a whisker.”
While Trump’s campaign aides and allies have urged him to focus on Harris and make the election a referendum on issues like inflation and border security, Trump has gone too far in recent days.
On Friday, he Gave a stunning statement to the news cameras In it he brought up a series of past allegations of sexual misconduct, describing some in graphic detail, although he denied the accusations by his accusers. Earlier, he voluntarily appeared in court for a hearing on an appeal of a decision that found him guilty of sexual harassment, drawing attention to his legal woes in the final stages of the campaign.
Earlier Saturday, Trump leaned into familiar complaints about everything from Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election to his allegations that he campaigned in one of Wisconsin’s most deeply battleground Republican groups.
“The Harris-Biden DOJ is trying to put me in jail — they want me in jail for the crime of exposing their corruption,” Trump claimed at an outdoor rally at a central Wisconsin airport, where he spoke behind a bulletproof glass wall. for new security protocols following his July assassination attempt.
There is no evidence that President Joe Biden or Harris had any influence on decisions by the Justice Department or state attorneys general to indict the former president.
Trump has skipped traditional debate preparation, opting to hold rallies and events while Harris has been holed up in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh since Thursday, working with aides.
Harris has agreed to only one talk so far, which will be hosted by ABC.
At the rally, Trump outlined his plans to “drain the swamp” — a throwback to his winning 2016 campaign message as he ran as an outsider challenging the status quo. Despite spending four years in the Oval Office, Trump vowed again to “take out the corrupt political class” and “trim the fat from our government in a meaningful way, for the first time in 60 years,” if he wins again.
As part of that effort, he announced Thursday, reiterating his plan to create a new “Government Efficiency Commission” led by Elon Musk, which would be charged with conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” to root out waste. .
On January 6, 2021, after again defaming a congressional committee investigating an attack on the nation’s capital by his supporters after losing his election in 2020, Trump told a crowd of thousands that he would “expeditiously review the cases of every political prisoner who has been wrongfully victimized. Harris.” by the regime” and sign his waiver on the first day back in office.
Trump has repeatedly defended people who are incarcerated for crimes including violent attacks on law enforcement.
And he said he would “completely reform” what he labeled the “corrupt department of Kamala’s injustice”.
“Instead of persecuting Republicans, they will focus on taking down bloody cartels, international gangs and radical Islamic terrorists,” he said.
Harris campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika responded to his comments with a statement that, if re-elected, Trump would “use his unchecked power to prosecute his enemies and pardon the insurgents who violently attacked our Capitol on January 6.”
Both Harris and Trump have made frequent visits this year to Wisconsin, a state where less than four percent of the last six presidential elections have been decided. Several polls of Wisconsin voters conducted after Biden withdrew showed Harris and Trump in a close race.
Democrats consider Wisconsin a must-win among “blue wall” states. Biden, who was in Wisconsin on Thursday, won the state by just 21,000 votes in 2020. Trump edged him in 2016 by a slightly larger margin, about 23,000 votes.
As Trump campaigned, Harris took a break from debate preparation to visit Panzi Spices in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where she bought several spice mixes. A customer saw the Democratic nominee and Harris hugged him and began to cry openly, saying, “We’re going to be fine. We are all in this together.”
Harris said she was honored to receive endorsements from two key Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former Wyoming congresswoman.
“People are fed up with the division and the attempts to divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message at the debate will be that the country wants to be united.
“It’s time to turn the page on the divide,” she said. “It is time to bring our country together, to forge a new path forward.”
Trump held his rally in Mosinee, a central Wisconsin town with a population of about 4,500. It is within Wisconsin’s largely rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in the purple state.
During his speech, he lashed out at Harris in dark and ominous language, claiming that if the woman he calls “Comrade Kamala Harris” gets four more years, you’ll be living in a full-blown banana republic ruled by “anarchy”. “The tyrant.”
Trump also railed against the administration’s border policies, calling the Democrats’ approach “suicidal” and accusing them of “importing murderers, child predators and serial rapists from all over the planet.”
Many studies have found that immigrants, including those in the country illegally, commit fewer violent crimes than native-born citizens. Violent crime in the US fell again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.
He dismissed warnings from US officials about ongoing Russian efforts to spread disinformation ahead of the November election, including allegations this past week that a media company linked to six conservative influencers was secretly funded by Russian state media employees.
“The Justice Department said Russia could meddle in our election again,” Trump told the crowd. “And, you know, the whole world laughed at him at this point.”
Among those in the crowd was Dale Osuldsen, who was celebrating his 68th birthday Saturday at his first Trump rally. He hopes a second Trump administration will “undo the culture” and return the country to its “basic past.”
“We’ve had past administrations say they want to fundamentally change America,” Osulden said. “Fundamentally changing America is a bad thing.”
Many supporters began making hours-long drives from across Wisconsin to see Trump speak. Some even came from further afield.
Sean Moon, a Tennessee musician who performs MAGA-themed rap music under the stage name “King Bullethead,” blasted his songs from a truck in the event parking lot. As a musician, he said Trump rallies approximate the experience of a raucous concert.
“Trump is a rockstar,” Moon said. “It’s incredible. People see that he represents them and the deep state is trying to kill him and take him out. But he’s strong and he stands up for the common man.”
Democrats have relied on strong turnouts in the state’s two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, to counter Republican strength in rural areas such as Mosinee and the Milwaukee suburbs. Trump must win votes in places like Mosinee to have any chance of cutting into Democrats’ advantage in urban areas.
Republicans held their national convention in Milwaukee in July, and Trump has made four previous stops in the state, most recently last week in the western Wisconsin city of La Crosse.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, packed the same Milwaukee arena last month where Republicans held their national convention for a rally to coincide with the Democratic National Convention just 90 miles away in Chicago. Walz returned to Milwaukee on Monday, where he spoke at a Labor Day rally organized by unions.
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