Trump is defending six Republicans accused of a plan to reverse his 2020 loss
Former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday defended six Nevada Republicans recently charged in connection with a scheme to overturn his 2020 election loss, claiming without evidence that they were victims of political persecution by the Biden administration.
Trump has repeatedly dismissed accusations this month that he has anti-democratic tendencies, pointing the finger at President Biden. He often claims without evidence that Mr. Biden is weaponizing the Justice Department to influence the 2024 election.
At a campaign event on Sunday in Reno, Trump sharpened that attack by pointing to the indictment this month of six members of the Nevada Republican Party who had acted as fake electors in a scheme designed to clinch Biden’s victory. Undo 2020. Those charged included state party chairman Michael J. McDonald.
“They are a bunch of dirty players,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Biden and the Democrats. “Look what they’re doing here with Michael and great people in this state. It is a shame.”
Trump’s comments in Nevada, expected to be a key battleground, are among the many ways he has tried to cast doubt on the integrity of the election process and sow doubts about the results he opposes.
The former president, who is also accused of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, repeated his false claims that the election was stolen from him. And he broadly accused Democrats of election fraud, without evidence.
Both parties are eyeing Nevada next year, when a Senate seat will also be voted on. The state has consistently voted for Democratic presidents since 2008, but other races have been more competitive. A poll released last month by The New York Times and Siena College showed Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden in Nevada by 10 points.
Still, Republican primary candidates have not campaigned much in the state, where Trump remains dominant in the polls and where the party-led caucus has adopted rules expected to tilt the outcome in his favor.
Mr. Trump’s speech in Reno focused heavily on Mr. Biden and offered a possible preview of the attacks he could make if he wins the Republican nomination and the two face off next fall.
As he conjured a dark vision of America plagued by crime and overrun by violent and mentally ill immigrants, his campaign displayed a new slogan, “Safer Off With Trump,” on the screens around him. (His campaign has unveiled a similar message: “Better off with Trump,” regarding the economy.)
As he often does at rallies, Mr. Trump claimed that leaders of unspecified countries were releasing patients from “insane asylums” and sending them to the United States. Fact checkers found no evidencebut Mr. Trump has repeatedly compared migrants to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional cannibal and serial killer.
“That’s what we got,” Trump said of Lecter. ‘We got him in. And this is not good. That’s like an explosion waiting to happen.”
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has grown more serious as he enters his third campaign. On Saturday, he told the crowd in New Hampshire that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a comment that previously drew condemnation because of echoes in the language of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler.
Trump’s stop in Reno was part of an unusually busy campaign schedule in which he delivered speeches in five days in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada – the first three nominated states. He is scheduled to return to Iowa on Tuesday.