The Atlantic has published an article claiming that former President Donald Trump promised Christian supporters that he will end elections if he takes office in 2025.
The Atlantic‘s Brian Klass wrote:
Yesterday, former President Donald Trump told a group of supporters that they won’t have to vote again if they elect him to the presidency. “You won’t have to do it anymore,” Trump said at the Turning Point Believers’ Summit in Florida. “It’ll be fixed; it’ll be fine; you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
Trump’s remarks represent an extraordinary departure from democratic norms in the United States—rarely if ever has a major party’s presidential candidate directly stated his aim to make elections meaningless, a notorious hallmark of autocracy.
There are at least two ways of interpreting this statement. First, Trump could be implying that there won’t be any future elections if he comes to power. He may imagine himself as an American Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator he routinely praises, a leader who’s declared himself “president for life.” As he often does, however, Trump left just enough room in what he said for plausible deniability. A second and slightly more charitable interpretation of his remarks is that Trump believes his presidency will entrench so many pro-Christian policies into the United States government that no future election could realistically undo his transformation of the country. Both interpretations lead to the same conclusion: that Trump is telegraphing his authoritarian intentions in plain sight, hoping to sever the link between voters and government policy.
There is, in fact, a third possibility — in fact, a probability: that Trump was joking with Christian voters who are generally wary of participation in electoral politics, telling them that if he wins the election he will make voting so secure that their votes will no longer be needed in future to overcome the possibility of cheating by Democrats.
Trump was speaking to a “Believers and Ballots” event, aimed at encouraging Christians to become involved in the democratic process.
Here is the transcript of Trump’s remarks, in full:
We will protect innocent life, and we will restore free speech in our country. And I will secure our elections. Our goal will be, as I said, one day voting with paper ballots, proof of citizenship, and a thing called voter ID. (Applause) You know, when you negotiate and I do that with the Democrats and I negotiate with them all the time on this. I say, look, we’re going to fix our laws with voting, we have to start with voter ID. Everybody has to — “No way!” — the discussion never even goes any further. I say, we have to have voter ID. It’s called voter identification. “No, we’re not going to do it.” Now, there’s only one reason they do that. because they want to cheat. There’s only one reason. You know, in their national convention, when they have their convention, they have a voter tag on them bigger than their chest, depending on who, whose, which chest we’re talking about. Bigger than this, I like this. It has their name, their serial number, it’s got the whole deal, middle name, past addresses, it’s got everything. Otherwise you can’t get into the Democrat National Convention. But with voting, one of your most important things you can do, maybe in many ways your most important, they don’t want to approve voter ID. That’s because they want to cheat. But until then, Republicans must win. We have to win this election. Most important election ever. (Applause) We want a landslide that’s too big to rig. If you want to save America, get your friends, get your family, get everyone you know, and vote, vote early, vote absentee, vote on Election Day. I don’t care how, but you have to get out and vote. And again, Christians — get out and vote! Just this time. (Applause) You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore. My beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I’m not a Christian. I love you. Get out. You’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good. You’re not going to have to vote.
The Atlantic is also responsible for the “suckers and losers” hoax — the unsubstantiated claim that Trump once mocked veterans and dead soldiers, which was refuted by nearly a dozen witnesses, including those who dislike Trump.
The idea that Trump will somehow end elections fits the Democratic Party’s message that Trump is a “threat to democracy” — a message that conservatives believe contributed to a dangerously hateful political climate that led to the assassination attempt against Trump earlier this month.
Ironically, Klass claimed in 2021 on MSNBC that it would be almost impossible to “deprogram” Trump supporters because many had “gone far enough down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.