Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday suggested that he fears the general election “is going to be rigged” — an unprecedented assertion by a modern presidential nominee.
Trump’s extraordinary claim — one he did not back up with any immediate evidence — would, if it became more than just an offhand comment, seem to threaten the tradition of peacefully contested elections and challenge the very essence of a fair democratic process.
“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” the Republican candidate told a town hall crowd in Columbus, Ohio.
Photo: AFP
He added that he has been hearing “more and more” that the election might not be contested fairly, though he did not elaborate further.
Trump made the claim after first suggesting that the Democrats had fixed their primary system so that Hillary Rodham Clinton could defeat Bernie Sanders. Trump has previously backed up that thought by pointing to hacked e-mails from the party that appeared to indicate a preference for Clinton. Still, the former US secretary of state received 3.7 million more votes than Sanders nationwide and had established a clear lead in delegates by March 1.
The celebrity businessman — who has been known to dabble in conspiracy theories, including claims that US President Barack Obama was not born in the US and, more recently, that Senator Ted Cruz’s father was an associate of former US president John F. Kennedy’s assassin — also claimed that the Republican nomination would have been stolen from him had he not won by significant margins.
He then asserted that November’s general election might not be on the up-and-up.
He repeated the charge on Monday night on Fox News Channel’s Hannity, saying: “November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged and I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us.”
Requests to Trump’s campaign for additional explanation were not returned.
The statement could be an effort by Trump to lay the groundwork of an excuse if he goes on to lose the general election, but if he were to be defeated in November and then publicly declares that the election results were bogus, his claim could yield unpredictable reactions from his supporters and fellow Republicans.
Trump has not been shy about asserting that the electoral process has been “rigged.”
It became a frequent catchphrase of his during a low-water mark of his primary campaign this spring, when forces allied with Republican rival Ted Cruz managed to pack state delegations with supporters of the Texas senator. Trump also asserted that the Republican Party had changed the delegate allocation in the Florida primary to favor a local candidate, such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, at Trump’s expense.
In recent weeks, in an effort to woo angry Sanders supporters to his campaign, Trump has made the claim that the Democrats’ process was also rigged.
On Monday night, Trump said Sanders “made a deal with the devil,” and said of Clinton: “She’s the devil.”
The Clinton campaign declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.
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