CNN anchor Jake Tapper let out an astonished guffaw as he watched rally clips of new and “absolutely stunning” threats and election lies from former President Donald Trump.
In addition to the usual features of MAGA rallies, Trump has been setting the stage to claim that he’s been cheated again (he wasn’t cheated a first time either) should Vice President Kamala Harris defeat him in November.
Trump has also been escalating the attacks and threats, as he did at a pair of rallies over the weekend.
On Monday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper tore into Trump with a review of Trump rally clips that he said took attack campaigning “into a whole new territory.”
At one point in the blistering commentary, Tapper let out an astonished laugh at Trump’s threat to “prosecute” people for what Tapper accurately called “non-existent crimes”:
TAPPER: In our 2024 lead, some absolutely stunning remarks made by the Republican nominee for president over the weekend, bringing this nation’s history of campaign rhetoric, even the particular field of harsh attacks into a whole new territory. It was, in fact, the century, believe it or not, when Republicans said they were offended, when then Senator Barack Obama used the term “putting lipstick on a pig” to discuss putting a nice face on what he deemed bad policy. It was last week when Republicans said they were offended because Democrats are saying Trump was a threat to democracy.
But all of that notwithstanding, here is Mr. Trump Saturday in Wisconsin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT & 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.
And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Trump might have actually realized during his Wisconsin speech that he was dragging campaign rhetoric into a whole new place because he himself commented, quote, this is a dark speech.
And the next day, in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump dim the lights again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired, said, but lying, Kamala Harris honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala, and I just don’t know what it is, but there is definitely something missing. (END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Perhaps even more alarming is the terrifying image Mr. Trump is painting of migrants. He misreported a recent report from ICE, which is Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, claiming that Biden- Harris allowed 13,099 convicted murderers to walk freely in the United States. That is a lie. This list is over decades, so it includes killers that Trump let in. And as point of fact, many of these individuals are currently in federal, state, or local prisons where they belong.
And yet Mr. Trump is now campaigning on this falsehood, fueling fear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They make our criminals looked like babies. These are stone cold killers that walk into your kitchen. They’ll cut your throat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Walk into your kitchen and cut your throat, again and again.
And beyond individual criminals walking into kitchens and cutting throats, Mr. Trump using stark and ugly language that evokes frankly, some of the worst anti-immigrant rhetoric in this nation’s history. Also said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You got to get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re going to lose your culture. You got to lose your country. You’re going to have crime the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: In addition to pushing mass deportations of millions of people, including those with otherwise clean and productive records.
At one point, Mr. Trump even proposed something that sounded pretty dystopian in order to cut down on shoplifting and theft.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: All these stores go out of business, right? They don’t pay rent. The city does -have — a whole, it’s a chain of events. It’s so bad.
One rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out, and it will end immediately, end immediately.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: I mean just trying to explain that. Is he suggesting that there’d be one hour were police are allowed to use excessive force on looters and shoplifters?
By the way, this footnote on that topic, new FBI statistics released today show that crime is dropping in the first six months of this year compared to the same point last year. From January to June, murders dropped 23 percent, reported rapes down 18 percent, robbery saw 14 percent, aggravated assaults down 8 percent.
Be that as it may, Mr. Trump remains fixated on crime, even imaginary crimes, such as the ramp in election fraud that did not happen in 2020, that he says without evidence or fact is happening right now, again, and he is saying that just as he plans to free the criminals who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he will prosecute the alleged defenders of these non-existent crimes that did not happen in that election, and as far as we can tell, are not happening in this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: And I told them, if we win and when we win, we’re going to prosecute people that cheated in this election.
And if we can, we’ll go back to the last one, too, if we’re allowed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: (ASTONISHED LAUGH) Trump keeps pushing new election lies. There are 12 according to CNN’s resident fact checker, Daniel Dale, and our justice reporter, Marshall Cohen, 12 new ones. Just some of those claims.
He’s falsely saying that Kamala Harris can only win through cheating. That’s not true. It’s a neck and neck race, either one of them could win it. He has falsely saying it was unconstitutional for the Democrats for replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris. The constitution has nothing to do with party nominations, is falsely saying voting by noncitizens is a widespread problem in U.S. elections. I’m sure that is any, any non-citizen voting is a problem, but widespread? There’s no statistics indicating its a widespread problem.
He’s falsely saying there’s no identity verification for overseas and military voters. It’s not true. You can read all 12 of them yourself at CNN.com. I posted them on Twitter or X @JakeTapper.
So make no mistake, Mr. Trump says these things and he means them and he has at least a 50-50 chance of being president. We should be paying attention to what he says.
Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.
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