RNC 2020: Trump makes surprise visit, says Democrats 'trying to steal election' like they did in 2016
President Donald Trump on Monday, August 24, alleged the Democrats will try to steal the November 3 election “just like they did last time with spying”. The 74-year-old incumbent, who is seeking re-election this year, made a surprise visit to the opening day of the Republican Party’s national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the GOP nominated him as its presidential candidate.
In his opening remarks, Trump targeted the Democrats to say: “They’re trying to steal the election from the Republicans, that's what it means.”
“In a very nice way, I will tell you, they are trying to steal the election just like they did it last time with spying and we caught them,” he added, taking the names of former president Barack Obama and his former deputy Joe Biden who will be Trump’s opponent in the upcoming election. Trump has initiated the term “spygate” saying the previous administration had placed a spy in his 2016 presidential campaign to make political gains.
'Dems plan to prevent ballots from reaching GOP supporters'
Protesting the idea of mail-in ballot, which according to Trump will see massive electoral malpractice, the president said the Democrats will harvest ballots and prevent them from reaching the GOP supporters. He called mail-in voting a “fraud”.
“You get the ballot and then they have harvesting,” he said.
Demand for mail-in voting has gone up in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic which has affected more than 5.7 million people and claimed over 177,000 people. The president took part in mail-in voting during the primary in Florida earlier this year and later defended it saying the state has the infrastructure. The president of late has targeted the postal service to stop the mail-in voting arrangement from going ahead.
“In fact, harvesting is illegal in your state. They wanted to put a Republican, fine man, a pastor, they wanted to put him in jail because he harvested. Now they want to make harvesting legal all of a sudden,” Trump said in a nearly hour-long remark at the North Carolina event which will continue till August 27. “We voted during World War I. We voted at the voting booth during World War II,” Trump told the audience comprising delegates and RNC personnel who sat at a distance from each other to maintain the Covid-19-time safety measures. “The pandemic – we're doing very well, and people know how to handle it. Look at the crowds. They're doing very well. It's very safe. it's going to be very safe,” he added.
The Republican convention began exactly a week after the Democrats held their virtual convention. Biden accepted the nomination on the final day of the four-day event, vowing to end the “darkness” of the Trump era. As his turn came, Trump called this election the “most important in the history of our country” and urged the supporters not to allow the Democrats to “take it away” from them.
Trump also said at the event that although he opposed mail-on voting, he is in favor of absentee voting. “If you have an absentee ballot where you request it, we're all in favor of that,” he said. “Absentee, like in Florida, they have absentee is good. 'But other than that, they're very, very bad. There will be millions of ballots,” he added.
Besides Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and Donald Trump Junior also spoke on August 24, among others.