President Donald Trump warned Republicans that the Democrats may attempt to manipulate the upcoming elections, late Monday night.
Trump was officially nominated for the presidential race by Republican delegates from around the United States on the first day of the Republican Convention. Following the standard programme of the Convention, Trump was scheduled to address his audience on Thursday. He has chosen to speak on both the first and the last day instead.
In his speech, Trump told the American people that this election “is the greatest scam in the history of politics”.
Trump suggested that the Democrats would be responsible for this scam, accusing them of “using Covid to steal an election” by proposing to let people cast their vote through the mail. This would prevent people from having to go to a physical location during the pandemic.
“They’re going to mail out 80 million [voting] ballots. It’s impossible, they have no idea. Who’s mailing them? Mostly Democrat states, Democrat governors. Well, suppose they don’t mail them to Republican neighbourhoods?”
Trump added that if he was to lose the elections, those elections would have to be “rigged” by the Democrats.
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On 14 August, AP News reported that Trump did not only use words to attack mail-in voting. The president admitted that he had been deliberately withholding funds from the US Postal Service to weaken the organisation before the mail-in plan could be executed.
“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”
Instead of the corona-proof elections, Trump said in June that he would like to see the elections postponed. He argued that unless the elections are delayed, people will not be able to vote “properly, securely and safely”.
Monday marked the first day of the three-day Republican Convention, which comes one week after the Democratic Convention in which Joe Biden was nominated to run against Trump. Kamala Harris will be Biden's running mate and prospective vice-president. She is the first person of colour to join the race for that position.
The US presidential elections are scheduled to take place in November.
Amée Zoutberg
The Brussels Times
