CNN
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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday characterised warnings that his victory in 2024 would symbolize a risk to democracy as a “hoax” and “Democrat misinformation.”
The previous president, who faces federal and state fees stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, mentioned in a speech hosted by the New York Younger Republican Membership that President Joe Biden “is the true risk to democracy.”
“Are you able to consider it? That is their new line, you understand,” Trump mentioned. “Right here we go once more — ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ ‘Mueller, Mueller, Mueller,’ ‘Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.’ One hoax after one other.”
“However no, I’m not a risk. I’ll save democracy. The risk is Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump mentioned.
He added: “And that’s what it’s, it’s a hoax. We name it now the threat-to-democracy hoax, as a result of that’s what it’s.”
Trump mentioned later that these assaults had been a “determined and shameless try and distract from the monstrous abuses of energy the left is committing earlier than your very eyes.” He pointed to greater than a dozen state-level petitions to take away him from the 2024 poll, citing a clause of the Structure’s 14th Modification barring those that have engaged in “rebel or rise up” from workplace.
Biden and Democrats have warned that electing Trump once more in 2024 might erode the foundations of American democracy. The president mentioned at a fundraiser Saturday in Los Angeles that “the best risk Trump poses is to the democracy.”
Trump himself has talked about exacting “retribution” in opposition to political enemies if he wins in 2024, and his marketing campaign has rolled out a sequence of coverage proposals that might broaden presidential authority over even nonpolitical levers of the federal authorities.
Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican who misplaced her seat to a Trump-backed major challenger final yr after she participated within the Home choose committee that probed the January 6, 2021, rebel on the US Capitol, mentioned in a latest CBS interview that the nation could be “sleepwalking right into a dictatorship” if Trump wins subsequent yr.
Requested about Cheney’s warning, Trump told Fox’s Sean Hannity throughout a city corridor final week that he wouldn’t be a dictator “aside from Day One” to handle the border and home oil manufacturing.
These remarks kicked off a flurry of criticism. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, mentioned in the course of the get together’s fourth primary debate that Trump was “an indignant, bitter man who now needs to be again as president as a result of he needs to actual retribution on anybody who has disagreed with him.”
Trump on Saturday evening complained about how his remarks to Hannity had been characterised, saying he by no means claimed he wished to be a dictator.
“I mentioned I wish to be a dictator for at some point,” Trump mentioned. “And you understand why I wish to be a dictator? As a result of I desire a wall … and I wish to drill, drill, drill.”
The group broke into the acquainted “Construct the wall” chant, which Trump inspired, earlier than including, “Effectively, I did.”
Trump referred to as Democrats “sick individuals” and mentioned they “don’t care about our nation.”
“They suppose the threat-to-democracy hoax will save Biden from having created the worst inflation in our nation’s historical past, a fragile financial system which will quickly finish in a melancholy,” the previous president mentioned.