Trump threatens to jail adversaries in escalating rhetoric ahead of pivotal debate.
The Associated Press, via the Las Vegas Sun:
Trump’s message represents his latest threat to use the office of the presidency to exact retribution if he wins a second term. There is no evidence of the kind of fraud he continues to insist marred the 2020 election; in fact, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration have said he lost fairly.
Just days ago, Trump himself acknowledged in a podcast interview that he had indeed “lost by a whisker.”
While Trump’s campaign aides and allies have urged him to keep his focus on Harris and make the election a referendum on issues like inflation and border security, Trump in recent days has veered far off course.
On Friday, he delivered a stunning statement to news cameras in which he brought up a string of past allegations of sexual misconduct, describing several in graphic detail, even as he denied his accusers’ allegations. Earlier, he had voluntarily appeared in court for a hearing on the appeal of a decision that found him liable for sexual abuse, turning focus to his legal woes in the campaign’s final stretch.
Earlier Saturday, Trump had leaned into familiar grievances about everything from his indictments to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election as he campaigned in one of the most deeply Republican swaths of battleground Wisconsin.
“The Harris-Biden DOJ is trying to throw me in jail — they want me in jail — for the crime of exposing their corruption,” Trump claimed at an outdoor rally at Central Wisconsin Airport, where he spoke behind a wall of bulletproof glass due to new security protocols following his July assassination attempt.
There’s no evidence that President Joe Biden or Harris have had any influence over decisions by the Justice Department or state prosecutors to indict the former president.
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Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika responded to his comments with a statement warning that, if Trump is reelected, he will “use his unchecked power to prosecute his enemies and pardon insurrectionists who violently attacked our Capitol on January 6."
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As Trump was campaigning, Harris took a short break from debate prep to visit Penzeys Spices in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where she bought several seasoning mixes. One customer saw the Democratic nominee and began openly weeping as Harris hugged her and said, “We’re going to be fine. We’re all in this together.”
Harris said she was honored to have endorsements from two major Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman.
“People are exhausted, about the division and the attempts to kind of divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message at the debate would be that the country wants to be united.
“It’s time to turn the page on the divisiveness,” she said. “It’s time to bring our country together, to chart a new way forward.”
Trump held his rally in the central Wisconsin city of Mosinee, with a population of about 4,500 people. It is within Wisconsin’s mostly rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in a purple state.
During his speech, he railed against Harris in dark and ominous language, claiming that if the woman he calls “Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will be living (in) a full-blown Banana Republic" ruled by “anarchy” and “tyranny.”
Trump also railed against the administration’s border policies, calling the Democrats’ approach “suicidal" and accusing them of having “imported murderers, child predators and serial rapists from all over the planet."
Many studies have found immigrants, including those in the country illegally, commit fewer violent crimes than native-born citizens. Violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.
