Donald Trump asked his supporters to “cheat like hell” during the midterms to avoid a GOP electoral wipeout.
While giving a speech on the second night of the 80-year-old president’s midterm convention flop in Dallas, Trump called on his MAGA base to raise their hands and recite an unhinged pledge that amounted to demanding that they commit voter fraud.
“I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe,” Trump began the pledge, which his supporters enthusiastically recited back to him.
“That I will go out with my family, my friends—I’ll do it any way. I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do,” Trump added, to laughter from the crowd. “I am going to go out, and I’m going to get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3, or we are going to vote before that.”
Trump’s pledge arrived as he railed against his longtime obsession with introducing voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting, which the president desperately wants to implement ahead of the midterms through his stalled SAVE America Act.
Republicans are widely expected to suffer huge losses in the midterm elections, with backlash to Trump’s disastrous policies, his dire handling of the economy and the war in Iran cited as reasons why the GOP could lose both the House and the Senate in November.
Trump, who is facing possible impeachment and becoming a lame-duck president if Democrats end up controlling Congress, has taken numerous desperate steps to try to stop a blue wave in the crucial midterm elections.
This includes staging the midterm convention itself and putting himself front and center on both nights.
However, the event has drummed up little interest beyond Trump’s MAGA base, with Dallas’ American Airlines Center full of empty seats. The convention has even been boycotted by dozens of Republican lawmakers who believe distancing themselves from a president with near-all-time-low approval ratings would improve their election hopes.
During his Wednesday night speech, Trump vowed to pay $5,000 to every U.S. adult if Republicans win both chambers of Congress, an idea that would cost more than $1 trillion and has faced accusations of amounting to a bribe from the president.
Even Republicans were quick to speak out against Trump’s nonsensical plan. “It seems incredibly desperate,” one unnamed House Republican told Politico. “I see zero chance of this happening,” added another House Republican at the convention.
Another brainwave from Trump was to ask voters to consider the midterms a referendum on his presidency, repeatedly instructing them to “pretend that I’m on the ballot.”
During his Thursday night speech in Dallas, Trump even warned Republicans face eternal damnation if they don’t vote in November.
“You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to Hell. You know that, OK? You go to Hell,” the president said. “And I don’t want that to happen to you. So please go and vote.”
