Trump Issues First Call to Arms Over Election Fraud Conspiracies

Donald Trump and his allies have suggested for months that the 2024 election will be “stolen,” much like they did in the 2020 cycle, prepping unfounded claims ahead of time that the election will be undermined by “noncitizen” voters, overseas ballot programs, and mail-in voting.

But on Friday, Trump officially called it, writing a “cease and desist” on Truth Social that effectively announced the Republican presidential nominee already believes that the November election is rigged—mere days into early voting.

“CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump posted. “It was a Disgrace to our Nation!”

Trump fleetingly acknowledged in September that he did, factually, lose the 2020 election. But his insistence on Friday that he would definitely win the 2024 race came with a threat: that anyone working for the other side of the aisle—from attorneys to election officials and donors—will face consequences when he does.

“Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Trump wrote. “We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

Trump’s allies have concretely worked to skew election results in battleground states. In Georgia, a pro-Trump state election board issued prohibitive regulations that would have made it significantly more difficult for the state to find people willing to volunteer for the increasingly arduous job.

Trump praised the MAGA members of Georgia’s board days before the August move, describing Dr. Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King as “pit bulls fighting for victory.”

Those regulations included mandating that poll workers hand-count ballots after they were electronically filed, and granting local election officials the authority to refuse to certify the results. Both of those rules were thrown out by a judge earlier this month.

Meanwhile, some of the most powerful conservatives in the federal legislature, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, have refused to state on the record that they will unequivocally accept the 2024 presidential election results. In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press earlier this month, Johnson wavered on whether he would do his job to certify the results regardless of who won, insisting that he would only do so “if the election is free and fair and legal.

“I think Donald J. Trump is your next president, and that can’t happen soon enough,” Johnson said at the time.

A shady new super PAC named for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg just spent nearly $20 million on efforts to help Donald Trump appear more moderate on abortion, but the group won’t reveal where its money comes from until after the election.

The pro-Trump RBG PAC (a massive insult to the late justice, who hated Trump) is attempting to use the liberal justice’s legacy to try and boost Trump ahead of the election. Its website even features photos of Ginsberg and the former president, captioned “Great Minds Think Alike.”

Two advertisements produced by the RBG PAC emphasized Trump’s statements claiming that he would not support a federal abortion ban.

The PAC revealed Friday that it had spent $19,976,000 on digital media, text messages, and printing or postage, according to a disclosure to the Federal Elections Commission. The majority of that cash, a whopping $17.3 million, was spent on digital media.

It’s unclear who exactly is funding RBG PAC. The group registered on October 16, which was the last day of the final filing period before Election Day, according to The New York Times. Any group active at that time would have had to disclose its donors and vendors, but RBG PAC’s contributors still remain a mystery.

Every cent was paid to a company called Western Creative Group LLC, a Wyoming-based company with no digital footprint. Political reporter Roger Sollenberger noted in a post on X that the company had “never been paid by a federal committee before; principals hidden behind a corporate agent; no online footprint whatsoever.”

Forms for the PAC’s expenditures were signed by May Mailman, one of Trump’s former legal advisers. While in the White House, Mailman worked in the chief of staff’s office and the staff secretary’s office.

After her turn in the Trump administration, Mailman served as the vice president of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, a Republican-led nonprofit organization that challenges what it views as violations to election law. She’s currently the director of the Independent Women’s Law Center.

During an appearance on CNN earlier this week, Mailman defended Elon Musk’s scheme to randomly give out $1 million to registered voters who sign his “constitutional petition,” a scheme that earned him a warning from the DOJ. Mailman said Musk’s stunt was just to get “attention” and that “creativity is warranted in elections.”

“So, Kamala Harris has raised $1 billion in three months. I mean, this is record-breaking and Trump’s money just isn’t there. And so I do think actually, there is something to super PACs using their money smarter and not just flooding the airwaves,” Mailman said.

Perhaps now, the former Trump adviser is putting her words into action and organizing a flood of attention in the 11th hour of Trump’s presidential race.

Despite his recent overtures to Muslim and Arab American voters, Donald Trump privately encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call earlier this month to “do what you have to do.”

The Washington Post reported Friday the former president told the Israeli prime minister that he supported Israel’s brutal bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, according to six anonymous sources. Trump himself has said that he has spoken to Netanyahu at least twice this month, with one phone conversation occurring as recently as Saturday.

According to Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump was especially impressed by Israel expanding its war to Lebanon, and told Netanyahu as much.

“He didn’t tell him what to do militarily, but he expressed that he was impressed by the pagers,” said Graham, who was on a call with Trump and Netanyahu earlier this month, referring to the Israeli attack on Hezbollah last month that used explosive batteries inside pagers. Those explosions killed dozens and injured more than 3,000.

“He expressed his awe for their military operations and what they have done,” Graham added. “He told them, do what you have to do to defend yourself, but we’re openly talking about a new Mideast. Trump understands that very much there has to be change with the corrupt Palestinian state.”

This would seem to contradict what Trump has said in recent weeks in his overtures to Muslim and Arab American voters. At a rally in North Carolina earlier this week, he spoke about how Dick Cheney brought war to the Middle East and killed “many many Arabs,” and took a shot at Cheney’s daughter Liz, who is campaigning with Kamala Harris in Michigan, home to a large population of Arab Americans.

“Why would Muslims support lyin’ Kamala Harris, when she embraces Muslim-hating—and very dumb person—Liz Cheney?” Trump asked the crowd.

Trump’s efforts have borne fruit with Arab Americans, with a recent poll showing him with a narrow lead over Harris with the community. Liz Cheney’s campaign visits to Michigan have not helped, with many of the state’s Arab and Muslim communities, including its 90,000 strong Iraqi-American population, remembering her father’s support for the Iraq War and her reputation for supporting torture and anti-Muslim bigotry.

But Trump’s calls to Netanyahu and praise for Israel’s brutal war—which has killed more than 42,00 Palestinians in Gaza since last year, and at least 1,580 people in Lebanon since September 23—contradict any promises or rhetoric he’s offering to Arab and Muslim voters. Just as Harris has not promised any meaningful deviation from the Biden administration’s unconditional support of Israel, if Trump returns to the White House, he too is likely to continue enabling Netanyahu’s wars. It seems Arab and Muslim voters, as well as others who want to see an end to Israel’s brutal actions, are left with little to hope for in this election.

Ohio Senator JD Vance still likes Mark Robinson—even if his boss doesn’t.

While campaigning in North Carolina Friday, the Republican vice presidential nominee gave a quick shout out to the conservative outcast before realizing, midsentence, that he was running off script.

“I want to give a shout-out to—you guys have a great lieutenant governor,” Vance said before putting his finger up in the air.

“Sorry, um, we got—sorry,” Vance continued. “Mark isn’t here.”

He was, of course, referring to North Carolina’s current lieutenant governor and the Republican gubernatorial nominee, who was removed from the billing of Vance’s rallies for political measure.

Robinson morphed into a political pariah after CNN published a sprawling investigation last month about his pre-politics proclivities, which included writing in online pornographic forums that he had, at least at one time, desired to own slaves, enjoyed transgender porn, and peeped on women’s locker rooms. In the weeks that followed, Robinson sued CNN for defamation, seeking $50 million in damages for “reputational harm” over what he described as a “high-tech lynching.” On Tuesday, Robinson tweaked that number, amending the lawsuit to instead seek just over $25,000 in damages.

Vance may not have gotten the memo that Robinson had been booted from the Trump campaign trail as a result of the stunning report. Hours before the story dropped, the Trump campaign reportedly told the Hitler-quoting, gay-bashing, conspiracy-flouting antisemite that he was no longer welcome to attend rallies for either candidate on the Republican presidential ticket, according to an anonymous source that spoke with the Carolina Journal in September. Local Republican strategists had also reportedly called on Robinson to exit the North Carolina gubernatorial race in order to save Trump’s chances in the battleground state, but Robinson roundly rejected those calls.

Long before the MAGA movement deemed Robinson to be dead weight, the exceedingly controversial politico had near countless headline-grabbing scandals based on his disturbing online history. Those included posts in which he minimized the horrors of the Holocaust, claimed a “satanic marxist” had made the movie Black Panther to pull “shekels” out of Black audiences, likened women getting abortions to murderers (despite admitting that his wife had an abortion), and derided gay people as “filth” and “maggots.” Robinson has also expressed archaic views about women’s role in society, telling a Charlotte-area church in 2022 that Christians are “called to be led by men.”

Robinson has been projected to lose North Carolina since at least July, with some political forecasters expecting a double-digit loss to his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein.

Escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump is now calling the United States “a garbage can for the world.”

The Republican nominee used the descriptor twice on Thursday night during a campaign rally in Arizona. “First time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can’ but, you know what, it’s a very accurate description,” he claimed.

On Friday in Texas, Trump again said, “We’re like a garbage can. First time I said it was last night.… I said it—I don’t know, just came out, ‘garbage can.’ We’re like a garbage can for the rest of the world to dump the people they don’t want.”

The unsavory, nativist phrase has elicited public outcry, and on Friday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris said Trump’s remarks were “just another example of how he really belittles our country.”

“This is someone who is a former president of the United States, who has a bully pulpit. And this is how he uses it? To tell the rest of the world that somehow the United States of America is trash?” Harris said. “I think, again, the president of the United States should be someone who elevates discourse and talks about the best of who we are.”

Online, many have decried Trump’s remarks as unpatriotic and departing from past U.S. leaders’ statements about America and immigration—such as those of John F. Kennedy, who celebrated America’s status as a “nation of immigrants” and wrote that “everywhere, immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.”

Historian Douglas M. Charles noted that Trump’s rhetoric parallels that of Ku Klux Klan leader William J. Simmons, who in the early 1920s said the United States is not “a melting-pot” but “a garbage can! … When the hordes of aliens walk to the ballot box and their votes outnumber yours, then that alien horde has got you by the throat.”

While the wording may be new—for Trump—his comparison of immigrants to garbage is consistent with his tendency to demonize and dehumanize immigrants, spanning back to his claims that Mexico was “bringing drugs,” “crime,” and “rapists” to the U.S. when announcing his 2016 campaign. More recently, he has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” repeatedly referred to them as “animals,” and spread debunked rumors about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Several former White House officials who served under Donald Trump have come out in support of retired General John Kelly, who earlier this week called the former president a fascist who often praised Hitler.

Politico reported Friday that more than a dozen officials agreed with Kelly in a letter of their own, stating that “this is who Donald Trump is.”

“The revelations General Kelly brought forward are disturbing and shocking. But because we know Trump and have worked for and alongside him, we were sadly not surprised by what General Kelly had to say,” they wrote in the letter.

The letter goes far in backing Kelly, with the signatories saying that like him, they “did not take the decision to come forward lightly.”

“We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments. Everyone should heed General Kelly’s warning,” the letter states.

The letter’s signatories included Trump administration officials such as former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to the vice president Alyssa Farah Griffin, and former assistant secretary of homeland security Elizabeth Neumann, among others.

Grisham spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, telling the Chicago audience that Trump “used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, just say it enough and people will believe you.’” Griffin has also come out against Trump, calling his message to women “creepy.”

The letter is the latest example of many Republicans turning against Trump. Some have even gone on to endorse Harris, such as a group of more than 100 former GOP officials, as well as former staffers to previous Republican presidential candidates. Harris hopes that the GOP defections don’t stop there but continue at the ballot box in 11 days.

The chair of the conservative-led House Freedom Caucus said that North Carolina’s legislature ought to preemptively grant Donald Trump all 16 of the state’s electors before any vote has even been counted.

Maryland Representative Andy Harris’s outrageous comments were in response to a speech that right-wing extremist Ivan Raiklin, who previously assembled a “Deep State target list” of Trump’s political enemies, gave at a Republican Party dinner hosted Thursday. Raiklin argued that due to the widespread damage and displacement caused by Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Republican-led state legislature should award its electors to Trump ahead of the election results, according to Politico.

Raiklin also suggested that Republican-controlled state legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia, and Wisconsin could carry out similar schemes, by coming together for a vote on Election Day.

When Raiklin opened the floor to questions, Maryland Representative Andy Harris said that it “makes a lot of sense” for North Carolina’s legislature to simply say Trump won, and actually suggested that waiting for the results of the popular vote would somehow “disenfranchise” voters.

“You statistically can go and say, ‘Hey, look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been,’” Harris said. “Which would be—if I were in the Legislature—enough to go, ‘Yeah, we have to convene the Legislature. We can’t disenfranchise the voters.’”

The popular vote typically determines the allocation of electors in all 50 states.

Harris argued that the plan would only work in North Carolina, and would probably look like an illegal plot to steal the White House if Republicans tried it anywhere else.

“But how do you make the argument in other states? I mean, otherwise it looks like it’s just a power play. With North Carolina I mean, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people who aren’t going to get to vote, and it may make the difference in that state,” he continued.

When asked to explain his statement, Harris told Politico, “As I’ve repeatedly said, every legal vote should be counted. I would hope everyone could agree that legal American voters whose lives were devastated by the recent storms should not be disenfranchised in the upcoming voting process.”

Early voting in North Carolina began last weekend, and already, voter turnout appeared to be lessened by the destruction of Hurricane Helene earlier this month. Across 13 counties in western North Carolina that were identified as the most affected by Helene, voter turnout on the first day of early voting was significantly lower than it was in 2020, according to Citizen Times.

Donald Trump’s ex-allies and former staffers agree that the Republican presidential nominee is a fascist—but the people laser-focused on returning him to the Oval Office are working overtime to undercut the dire warning.

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist ideology, characterized by dictators who lean on military force to quash civil opposition. Trump has repeatedly mirrored the rhetoric of some of the world’s most infamous fascist leaders—namely, Adolf Hitler—on hot-button issues such as immigration. Earlier this week, interviews in The Atlantic and The New York Times revealed that Trump had, in private conversations, showered the violent regimes with praise, reportedly telling White House staffers that he needed the “kind of generals that Hitler had.”

In a joint statement released Friday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed that it was Vice President Kamala Harris, and her decision to formally label Trump a fascist, that has ushered more violence into the presidential race (as opposed to Trump’s dangerous and economically unstable policy goals).

Harris “must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions,” the pair wrote.

Memorializing the assassination attempt on Trump in July, the conservative leaders argued that the “Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus.”

“Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over,” Johnson and McConnell wrote. “The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility.”

But the joint letter belies the reality that the conservative leaders are backing Trump for wildly different reasons. Johnson, a Christian nationalist with plans to curb LGBTQ+ right and hand states the keys to ban abortion, has vehemently defended Trump for years, going so far as to design the legal strategy to further the former president’s 2020 election interference conspiracy. On the other hand, McConnell—an expedient Republican operative—has privately referred to Trump as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” and a “despicable human being,” all while publicly endorsing him and promising that he’s on the “same team” as the Republican presidential nominee.

Their letter also conveniently ignores the fact that Trump has repeatedly called Harris a fascist for the past few months, despite the fact that Harris’s rhetoric and policies don’t align with the authoritarian ideology while Trump’s do.

Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans acknowledge that Trump is a fascist, according to a new poll from ABC News/Ipsos. That included 87 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans. That same survey found that nearly two-thirds of voters view Trump as a candidate who regularly departs from the truth.

It appears Jeff Bezos is very afraid of Donald Trump. For the first time in 36 years, The Washington Post will not be endorsing a presidential candidate this election.

The Post’s editorial page editor David Shipley announced the news to shocked colleagues in a reportedly tense meeting Friday morning. The paper’s publisher, William Lewis, published a note to readers shortly thereafter confirming the news, writing that the newsroom is “nonpartisan” and wants to let readers “make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions.”

It’s a stunning announcement from the paper that proudly adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” just after Trump became president in 2017.

The news caught staffers completely off guard. In fact, the Post—reporting on the chaos within its own newsroom—noted that a presidential endorsement for Kamala Harris had already been drafted. The paper’s editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned soon after the public announcement, and other staffers are similarly furious over the decision. One opinion writer, speaking anonymously to Semafor’s Max Tani, said, “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”

The Post’s union put out a statement pointing a finger directly at Bezos for the decision.

Marty Baron, the newspaper’s former executive editor, also slammed the decision. “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” he wrote on X. “[Donald Trump] will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner [Jeff Bezos] (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

The Post endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020, calling out Trump’s threat to democracy as well as his “few accomplishments in his first term and no agenda for his second.” The editorial board has also previously condemned Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection, his actions while in office, and his general rhetoric.

Suffice it to say, this is a major departure that can only be explained by cowardice from Bezos, one of the world’s richest people. The Amazon founder is likely worried about how a Harris endorsement would hurt him if Trump returns to office. Bezos has contracts before the federal government that could be at risk, including Amazon’s shipping and cloud computing services and his Blue Origin space company (also a government contractor).

The news indicates a troubling trend of billionaires already bowing to Trump. Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong reportedly ordered the paper to avoid making an endorsement in the presidential election. On Wednesday, the LA Times’ editorials editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest, saying the decision made the paper look “craven and hypocritical” given its past reporting and editorials on Trump.

This story has been updated.

Almost half of all Americans view Donald Trump as a fascist, according to a new poll from ABC News/Ipsos.

The poll, released Friday morning, shows 49 percent of registered voters think of Trump as fitting the definition of a “political extremist who acts as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents.” The survey also found that nearly two-thirds of registered voters say Trump departs from the truth.

The poll’s results seem to break down along political lines, with 87 percent of Democrats, 46 percent of independents, and 12 percent of Republicans calling Trump a fascist. The poll showed that 22 percent of registered voters saw Kamala Harris as a fascist, broken down to 41 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of independents, and 3 percent of Democrats.

The poll was conducted before Trump’s former chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that the former president fit the definition of a fascist and had praised Hitler multiple times in the past. An article published Tuesday from The Atlantic also detailed Trump’s praise for autocrats and his desire to use the military against his political opponents.

Harris has called out the former president for his authoritarian wishes, saying on Wednesday, “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question, in 13 days, will be: What do the American people want?”

Well, right now, the American people are almost evenly split in their choice for president, according to the latest polls, with some of them showing Trump ahead and others giving Harris the edge. With only 11 days left to go, Harris still has to convince more Americans that Trump is a fascist, and how dangerous that would be. Unfortunately, it appears many Americans openly embrace Trump’s fascistic ideas, such as putting immigrants in militarized camps. The question is whether those Americans will vote in large numbers.