Former President Donald Trump on Saturday characterized warnings that his victory in 2024 would represent a threat to democracy as a “hoax” and “Democrat misinformation.”
The former president, who faces federal and state charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said in a speech hosted by the New York Young Republican Club that President Joe Biden “is the real threat to democracy.”
“Can you believe it? This is their new line, you know,” Trump said. “Here we go again — ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ ‘Mueller, Mueller, Mueller,’ ‘Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.’ One hoax after another.”
“But no, I’m not a threat. I will save democracy. The threat is Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump said.
He added: “And that’s what it is, it’s a hoax. We call it now the threat-to-democracy hoax, because that’s what it is.”
Trump said later that those attacks were a “desperate and shameless attempt to distract from the monstrous abuses of power the left is committing before your very eyes.” He pointed to more than a dozen state-level petitions to remove him from the 2024 ballot, citing a clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment barring those who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from office.
Biden and Democrats have warned that electing Trump again in 2024 could erode the foundations of American democracy. The president said at a fundraiser Saturday in Los Angeles that “the greatest threat Trump poses is to the democracy.”
Trump himself has talked about exacting “retribution” against political enemies if he wins in 2024, and his campaign has rolled out a series of policy proposals that would expand presidential authority over even nonpolitical levers of the federal government.
Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican who lost her seat to a…
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