Trump’s Election Threat Reveals a Dangerous Power Grab in the Works

Donald Trump keeps making the same weird claim to his supporters that he doesn’t need more votes. On Wednesday, he repeated the idea at a rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, telling his supporters that “our primary focus is not to get out the vote.”

Trump emphasized that his goal was “to make sure they don’t cheat,” adding that Democrats “are going to cheat like hell to win the election because they have no bounds, they have no bounds.”

Trump has been using this odd message for weeks, saying on Fox and Friends last month that his instructions to his supporters are: “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes.” Less than a week later, he told a group of supporters, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” He then doubled down on those claims to Fox’s Laura Ingraham after she pressed him for clarification. Even going back to October, he said something similar at a New Hampshire rally.

It seems that the former president and convicted felon wants to cast doubt on the coming election, especially if results don’t appear to be going his way. Considering that he lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, that is a strong possibility. Trump may be thinking of riling up his supporters early and then turning them loose like he did at the Capitol in 2021.

Or, as he said in North Carolina, he’s been so fooled by all of the Trump signs he’s seeing that he really thinks he has the votes locked up. That could be another sign of cognitive decline.

Donald Trump complained about his own campaign asking him to please stay on topic, during a meandering speech on Wednesday that was meant to be about national security.

Trump went off on a wild tangent whining about his campaign’s new strategy during a campaign stop in Asheville, North Carolina. He strayed off topic to lament about Barack Obama’s address Tuesday night, which included a jab at Trump that’s likely to stick with him: a comment on Trump’s so-called “crowd size.”

“Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night, take loose shots, he was taking shots at your president,” Trump cried on stage Wednesday.

“You know they always say ‘Sir, please stick to pah-licy, don’t get personal,’” Trump said mockingly.  “And yet, they’re getting personal all night long, these people! Do I still have to stick to pah-licy?”

The crowd cheered “No!” in reply.

But it’s not Trump’s devoted fans who are asking him to cut down on the personal attacks and stay on message—it’s everybody else.

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign launched a new tactic to get Trump to curb his tendency to give speeches littered with off-script asides, which are more personal attacks against his opponents than actual policy ideas, by having him appear at smaller “messaging events” focused on one specific topic.

It’s not just Trump’s team that sees the problem. Republican lawmakers have also begun to sound the alarm that Trump’s scattered speeches and lame, ad hominem attacks could lose them votes in November as well.

So far, the Trump team’s new approach hasn’t been going all that well—a sleepier Trump, deprived of the energy of a larger audience, has been rotely delivering similar remarks at every speaking event. Tuesday’s press conference was meant to be about crime and safety, but Trump still managed to deliver most of the same talking points he did during his speech on economic issues the day before. No matter the size of the audience, or the stated topic, Trump manages to find a way to say everything that pops into his head.

For example, on Wednesday, Trump continued his imagined conversation with some aide warning him to stay on topic: “‘Sir, you must stick to policy. You’ll win it on the border, you’ll win it with inflation, you’ll win it with your great military that you built—that they gave away $85 billion dollars worth of it to Afghanistan. Sir, you’re going to win it on crime. The crime is running through the streets like never before. You’re going to win it on all of these things ...’” Trump rambled on.

Later in the speech, Trump continued to air his frustration with his team again, noting that Obama had been “very nasty last night.”

“I try and be nice to people, but it’s a little tough when they get personal. ‘Please’ again, remember? ‘Please, sir don’t get personal, talk about policy,’” Trump said. “Let me ask you about that. We’re going to do a free poll. Here’s the two questions: Should I get personal, should I not get personal?”

“Should I get personal?” Trump asked, to a roaring cheer from the crowd. “Should I not get personal?” he asked, and the response was far more muted.

“I don’t know, my advisers,” Trump mused, “are fired.”

“No, [I] would rather keep it on policy,” he said, dismissing the response from the crowd. “But sometimes it’s hard when you’re attacked from all ends.”

Despite bragging loudly and proudly that he “calls people names” like a childhood bully, Donald Trump admitted that he is struggling to find a nickname for Kamala Harris.

“I really didn’t find one with her,” he said at a rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, even as he announced his newest nickname for his opponent: Comrade Kamala.

After trying out “Lyin’ Kamala,” “Crazy Kamala,” “Kamabla,” and “Kamala Krash,” Trump is desperate to make his new name for the vice president stick. He has spent the last week trying it out and continuing to try to paint Harris as a “radical left” candidate. 

“I think her name will be ‘comrade’ because I think that’s the most accurate name,” said Trump in his Wednesday speech. “You know all my names. They’ve all worked, they’ve all been very successful.”

Nicknames and personal attacks have been a large part of each one of Donald Trump’s campaigns with such hits as “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Meatball Ron.” It seems like even Trump can acknowledge that “Comrade Kamala” might not be perfect but he hopes it will at least mentally paint a picture of a far-left candidate.

This past Sunday Trump even went so far as to post an A.I.-generated photo of so-called Communist Chairman Harris speaking at the Democratic National Convention to a militant proletariat with a hammer and sickle flag. But both this weird image and the nickname don’t make Harris seem less cool and don’t erase her more moderate policies on the border, crime, and fracking.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decided to end his quixotic independent campaign for president, ABC News reported Wednesday, citing anonymous sources.

The move will come by the end of this week, with Kennedy leaning toward endorsing Donald Trump for president, but that has not been finalized and could still change, according to ABC. One source said that Kennedy hopes to make things final fast in order to put a damper on Democrats’ momentum from their convention in Chicago.

Kennedy plans to speak to the nation on Friday about “his path forward,” his campaign announced earlier Wednesday.

Kennedy reached out to both the Kamala Harris and Trump campaigns in the past few weeks in the hope of trading an endorsement for a cabinet position, but only received a response from Trump, albeit with no agreement. In recent days, Kennedy’s wealthy running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has floated the idea of either dropping out and joining forces with Trump, or staying in the race and laying the groundwork for a stronger presidential run in 2028.

Kennedy’s campaign was always on the margins, but had no shortage of dull moments, particularly with revelations from the political scion’s life. He was found to have once had a worm in his brain, he dumped a bear carcass in Central Park a decade ago, and he faces allegations of sexual assault and serial womanizing. His famous family as well as his fellow environmentalists disavowed his candidacy, which was backed by many right-wing donors hoping to hurt the Democratic ticket. Until October, Kennedy was still flirting with challenging President Biden as a Democratic primary candidate.

In the end, Kennedy’s small support base of environmentalists, fans of the Kennedy family dynasty, and wealthy new age hippies doesn’t seem to be enough to keep his campaign going. Not to mention the fact that even after cutting back on events, the campaign is still losing a lot of money.

This story has been updated.

Before his explosive political career and unsuccessful nomination to speaker of the House, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan worked as an assistant coach to Ohio State University’s wrestling team from 1986 to 1994. His tenure overlapped with that of Richard Strauss, a team doctor accused of abusing at least 177 male student-patients. Former athletes, as well as multiple investigations that don’t directly name Jordan, argue that the congressman knew of the rampant abuse but failed to do anything about it. In fact, his former athletes have testified that Jordan worked overtime to cover the whole scandal up.

Three of those former athletes, Rocky Ratliff, Matt Reed, and Will Knight, appeared at the Democratic National Convention this week in a show of force behind Jordan’s liberal challenger for Ohio’s 4th congressional district, Tamie Wilson.

Waving placards that spelled out “FIRE JIM JORDAN,” the trio was joined in solidarity by former University of Michigan student wrestler Tad Deluca, who blew the whistle on similar abuse at the hands of his athletic department doctor, Robert Anderson. Anderson’s rampant abuse was the subject of a $490 million settlement by the school to 1,050 victims in 2022, one of the largest such settlements over campus sexual misconduct in U.S. history.

Together with Wilson, the sexual abuse victims have become advocates, fighting for stronger national protections for youth athletes around the country. They have spoken and gained the support of members in Congress, including Representative Jamie Raskin, and have plans to meet with more Democrats in the Senate in an effort to advance a bill that they believe would prevent future instances of child sexual assault.

“We’re all people with lives, and we’re just ordinary people trying to make a difference,” Ratliff told The New Republic Tuesday evening. “And [Wilson’s] the only one that’s basically taking the bull by the horns and getting us those meetings and not letting them forget what happened at Ohio State, because everybody wants to forget it, including Ohio State.”

Some studies suggest that student athletes may be at even greater risk of sexual abuse than nonathletes their age. More than one in four college-aged athletes reported being sexually assaulted or harassed by someone in a position of power over them on campus, according to a 2021 survey by educational nonprofit Lauren’s Kids. A 2023 report by the sexual assault prevention group It’s On Us found that out of 710 male college athletes, 41 percent reported hearing about instances of sexual or domestic abuse, but were not aware of the school’s procedures, policies, or even their Title IX officer.

And student athletes below college age appear to be similarly at risk. A Canadian study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2022 found that 42 percent of surveyed varsity athletes had been victims of sexual violence, compared to 26 percent of the general population.

Wilson’s Comprehensive Sexual Abuse Prevention and Accountability Act aims to prevent instances of sexual abuse and harassment by nationalizing protections, which currently vary from state to state. This would include removing the statute of limitations to prosecute sexual abuse cases, implementing mandatory safety measures such as annual student safety classes focused on reinforcing reporting protocols, and expanding background checks on medical staff employed by educational institutions, which could include psychological exams with yearly requalification requirements based on student approval ratings.

The bill also threatens to rescind federal funding from any school caught covering up sexual abuse or harassment scandals.

Knight, now a high school wrestling coach himself, related that he couldn’t imagine how anyone could believe that the House Judiciary Committee chairman would defend and represent the interests of everyday Ohioans when he failed to protect the safety of his own athletes.

“All I do is try to tell the truth about Jim,” Knight said. “He could have been a hero.”

Jordan was once someone he could debate healthily with, even if their politics differed, said Knight, “but something happened to him after 2008,” one year after Jordan assumed office.

Once he obtained power in Washington, the Ohio Republican turned his influence on the wrestling victims, working to flip everyone from former school officials to the family members of victims in an effort to discredit their stories and brush the ordeal under the rug, according to several of the former athletes.

“Being a coach, I couldn’t imagine letting my high school wrestlers down,” Knight continued. “It doesn’t even compute in my brain.”

Jordan has repeatedly denied knowing about the decades-long abuse scandal and has accused the victims’ accounts of being “sequenced and choreographed,” going so far as to suggest that the misconduct was a left-wing conspiracy.

“I knew of no abuse. Never heard of it. Never had any reported to me. If I had, I’d have dealt with it. Every single coach has said the same thing I have,” Jordan told Fox News in 2018. (The head coach Jordan worked for, Russ Hellickson, has admitted to knowing of the abuse but claimed he never discussed the issue with Jordan. In a 2018 interview with CNN, Hellickson lamented the fact that Jordan was being torn apart by “semantics.”)

Wilson’s odds of winning the historically Republican district are slim to none, according to polling data aggregated by The Hill, but Wilson believes that Jordan has simply been “elected by default” and sees a definite path forward for her campaign, which has raised more than $1 million to date.

“If every parent knew what was going on, the alarm bells would be sounding. There would be such a huge movement,” Wilson, a self-advertised “boy mom,” told TNR. “It is so important that we protect our children, and parents need to know that they need to get more involved, and that is why I’m running for office.”

There are plentiful reasons why Ohioans might be upset with the job Jordan has done in the House, regardless of his spotted personal history. In 16 years in Congress, the Republican firebrand has failed to pass a single bill, with former Speaker John Boehner labeling him as a “legislative terrorist.” He has consistently ranked near the bottom of the House in terms of effectiveness, according to the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

Jordan was accused in an Ohio Capital Journal opinion piece of “betraying America” for his actions surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and was reportedly heavily involved in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, even going on to insist this year that the election was “stolen.”

“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6th than any other member of the House of Representatives,” former Representative Liz Cheney said in October, when Jordan threw in his hat for the chaotically overturned speakership.

Apart from that, Jordan spent the better part of the last year forcing a baseless impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, ignoring warnings that the story sold by the probe’s primary witness, Alexander Smirnov, was full of holes, earning him the ire of members in his own party. Smirnov reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president. Jordan later conceded that “maybe the guy did lie.”