Donald Trump brands US “Third World nation” over election “skullduggery”

Former President Donald Trump has called the United States a “third world nation,” expressing frustration over what he described as widespread election “skullduggery.”

“I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election,” the Republican presidential candidate wrote on Truth Social on Friday, adding, “It was a Disgrace to our Nation!”

There has been no evidence of any election interference by the Democrats in 2020, despite Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen from him.

The former president is involved in two criminal cases in which he is accused of election interference and pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence and state officials to reverse the 2020 election results. Trump has denied the charges against him and has repeatedly said he is the victim of a political witch hunt.

In his Truth Social post, Trump continued: “Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, 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. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T!

“Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

In another Truth Social post on Friday, the former president criticized U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, the federal judge in Virginia who halted the state’s program to purge its voter rolls of potential noncitizens and ordered that more than 1,600 people be reregistered. Trump called the decision “totally unacceptable.”

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who initially proposed the purge, has said he will appeal the ruling. The purge sparked a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice over efforts to remove voters less than 90 days before the election.

“Sleepy Joe Biden and Comrade Kamala Harris ridiculously accuse me of wanting to ‘weaponize’ the Justice Department, when they have done all of the weaponizing. Now, their truly Weaponized Department of ‘Injustice,’ and a Judge (appointed by Joe), have ORDERED the Great Commonwealth of Virginia to PUT NON-CITIZEN VOTERS BACK ON THE ROLLS. This is a totally unacceptable travesty, and Governor Youngkin is absolutely right to appeal this ILLEGAL ORDER, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hopefully fix it!” Trump wrote.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment.

Experts say the 1,600 registered voters were removed from the rolls based on less-than-reliable Department of Motor Vehicles data. Giles ruled that the purge violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which bans states from removing registered voters within 90 days of a federal election. There is no evidence suggesting the registered voters were noncitizens.

Still, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Only U.S. Citizens should be allowed to vote. Keep fighting, Glenn – AND REPUBLICANS IN VIRGINIA, KEEP VOTING EARLY! I will be calling in to Glenn’s Rally with Lara Trump tomorrow morning to talk about this crazy Ruling, and announce my final stop in Virginia before Election Day. TUNE IN!”

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting, and cases of the law being broken are rare, according to election experts and studies. Still, the purge of noncitizen voters has become part of Republicans‘ push against what they see as a fraudulent election.

Though Trump has spent years claiming without evidence that early voting is suspect and fraudulent, he has encouraged his supporters to vote early ahead of November’s election.

Overall, early voting trends suggest an advantage for Democrats, who generally vote earlier and by mail more frequently than Republicans. According to the University of Florida’s Election Lab voting tracker, more than 7.4 million registered Democrats have voted early, compared to 6.6 million Republicans. But while more Democrats have voted, early data from the swing states indicates a surge in early Republican turnout.

In Nevada, a state where Democrats typically depend on early voting to counter Republican Election Day turnout, data from the voting tracker showed that as of Friday, about 22,000 more Republicans than Democrats had voted early. In Arizona, where more than 1 million votes have already been cast, Republicans made up 42 percent of those votes, while Democrats accounted for 35 percent, the tracking data showed. North Carolina recorded a smaller gap, with 34.4 percent of the early voters registered as Republicans and 33.2 percent as Democrats.

While Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin do not track party registration for early voters, Pennsylvania reported that 59 percent of more than 1.2 million early ballots were from Democrats, compared to 30 percent from Republicans.

As the early voting data shows whether voters are registered with a party, not which candidate they voted for, it remains to be seen what the data means for the election, and the early electorate may change from day to day as more people vote early.