Speaking at a campaign event in Iowa, Trump said it was important to scrutinize the vote in the battleground states likely to determine the general election. He singled out the biggest cities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
“So the most important part of what’s coming up is to guard the vote. And you should go into Detroit and you should go into Philadelphia and you should go into some of these places, Atlanta,” Trump said in Ankeny, a suburb of Des Moines.
Trump’s comments foreshadow what is likely to be a contentious election in November 2024. Despite the failure of dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies challenging the outcome in 2020, Trump continues to claim, without evidence, that he lost to U.S. President Joe Biden due to fraud.
He’s basically asking for another Jan 6, but on a micro scale. Show up, disrupt the process, give them hell. If his dumbass followers take heed it won’t be pretty.
What does “guarding the vote” even look like? Showing up with a gun and harassing minorities? If there is secret, insidious voter fraud occurring you’re not going to able to spot it by standing guard at the door (of course, there isn’t ). It would be happening behind the scenes. He is inciting political violence, just like he did in his speech before he set his mob loose on the capital.
It will probably look a lot like the mobs outside election offices after the 2020 election, where the Trump “observers” harassed the vote counters, called every minor hand motion an attempt to rig votes, and blatantly ignored the rules for observers. Except this time the intimidation tactics and conspiracy flinging will target the voters directly.