Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened to prosecute his political enemies “to the fullest extent of the law” should he win the 2024 presidential election and signaled once again that he would not accept defeat come November.
In a late-night Truth Social post on Saturday, the former president wrote that lawyers, donors, “illegal voters” and election officials involved in “unscrupulous behavior” in the upcoming election will be punished at levels “never seen before.” As he's done many times before, the 78-year-old candidate made unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen and warned that the United States was devolving “into a Third World Nation.”
“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Trump wrote.
“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” he added.
Trump, on Truth Social and X, makes no secret of his intent to go after, prosecute and imprison those who he deems to have “cheated” in the 2020 election if he is elected in November. pic.twitter.com/d3HZjKecGw
— Vivian Salama (@vmsalama) September 8, 2024
Trump’s post comes just over a week before early voting kicks off in Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Virginia and just days before Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will debate one another for the first time.
Trump, who was convicted of 34 felony counts earlier this year, has made retribution a key theme throughout his 2024 presidential campaign. He has promised to seek revenge against his political and personal opponents and has previously called for an end to the U.S. constitution over the 2020 election results.
“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” Trump said last year at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
In an interview on MSNBC, Democratic strategist Maya Rupert said Trump’s comments are “voter suppression at the highest order,” comparing Trump’s repeated threats to Jim Crow-era voter suppression tactics.
“He is trying to scare people out of participating in the process. That is – that goes against every single thing we stand for as a country,” she said. “This should be disqualifying, for him to say so plainly that he plans on jailing his opponents and extending that to voters, to donors, to political operatives."
.@MayaRupert #SoundsOff on Trump threatening adversaries with prison "This should be disqualifying. For him to say so plainly that he plans on jailing his opponents...he is trying to scare people out of participating in the process." #SundayShow pic.twitter.com/iEvmIq1qri
— The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@weekendcapehart) September 8, 2024
Marc Elias, a Democratic election lawyer and the founder of Democracy Docket, criticized the Republican Party for enabling Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric.
“Where are the so-called 'moderate' Republicans denouncing this? Where is the GOP legal establishment that is supposedly committed to the rule of law? The truth—they don't exist. It's just proud MAGA and scared MAGA,” he wrote on X.
Authoritarian expert and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned that Trump’s behavior is right out of the “authoritarian playbook.”
“Trump will spend your tax dollars on personal retribution investigations on a large scale,” she wrote on X.
With just under two months left until November’s election, Trump’s threats have even prompted lifelong Republicans to speak out against the former president in a plea to Americans to seriously consider the consequences of a second Trump presidency.
“I've never voted for a Democrat. It tells you the stakes in this election,” former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney said in an interview on ABC on Tuesday. Cheney has also said her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, would vote for Harris as well.
“Donald Trump presents a challenge and threat fundamentally to the republic. We see it on a daily basis. Somebody who was willing to use violence in order to attempt to seize power, to stay in power ... we have to do everything possible to ensure he's not reelected,” Cheney said.
Trump currently leads Harris 48 to 47 in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, a lead within the poll’s three-point margin of error.
