During a campaign rally in Virginia on Friday, President Donald Trump continued to spread debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, telling his supporters that it was impossible for him to lose the November election and declaring that he would be “stupid” to hand over power peacefully should he lose.
Trump falsely claimed the only way he could lose is if Democrats “cheat” despite trailing Biden in national and battleground polling.
“We not gonna lose this, except if they cheat,” he ranted as the crowd cheered. “That’s the only way we’re gonna lose is if there’s, uh, mischief,” he argued. “And it will have to be on a big scale.”
“And we do want a very friendly transition, but we don’t want to be cheated and be stupid and say, ‘oh, let’s transit — we’ll go and we’ll do a transition’ and we know that there were thousands and thousands of ballots that made the difference through cheating,” he said, repeating the debunked conspiracy theories.
“We’re not going to stand for it,” he vowed. “We’re not going to stand for it.”
Here’s how CNN’ Daniel Dale described it:
Trump just now in summary:
– The only way we can lose is if they cheat
– If they cheat, we're not going to have a friendly transition— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 26, 2020
Watch:
"We're not gonna lose this, expect if they cheat … that's the only way we're gonna lose" — Trump pic.twitter.com/RING2wOctz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 26, 2020
