Trump threatens opponents with prison sentences for escalating his rhetoric before debate | News, Sports, Jobs

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Central Wisconsin Airport, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Mosinee, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

MOSINEE, Wis. (AP) — Just days before his first and likely only debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump posted a warning on his social media site threatening to jail those “involved in unscrupulous acts” this election, which he said would be subject to intensive scrutiny.

“IF I WIN, the people who CHEATED will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, including long prison sentences, so that this perversion of justice is not repeated,” Trump wrote this late Saturday, once again sowing doubts about the integrity of the election, even though fraud is incredibly rare.

“Please be careful” He continued: “that these legal consequences extend to lawyers, political activists, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials. Those who behave unscrupulously will be tracked down, caught and prosecuted on a scale that has unfortunately never been seen before in our country.”

Trump's message is his latest threat to use the office of the president to exact retribution should he win a second term. There is no evidence of the kind of fraud he continues to claim marred the 2020 election; in fact, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration have declared he lost fairly.

Only a few days ago, Trump himself admitted in a podcast interview that he actually “lost by a hair’s breadth.”

While Trump's campaign aides and allies urged him to keep his focus on Harris and make the election a referendum on issues such as inflation and border security, in recent days Trump has strayed far from his course.

On Friday, he gave a stunning statement to the cameras, citing a series of past allegations of sexual misconduct and describing some of them in great detail, even as he denied the allegations made by his accusers. He had earlier appeared voluntarily in court to attend a hearing to appeal a verdict that found him guilty of sexual assault, turning the spotlight on his legal troubles in the closing stages of the campaign.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump had raised familiar complaints on everything from his indictments to Russian interference in the 2016 election as part of his campaign in one of the most Republican constituencies in the contested state of Wisconsin.

“The Justice Department under Harris and Biden is trying to put me in prison – they want me in prison – for the crime of exposing their corruption.” Trump made this claim at an outdoor rally at Central Wisconsin Airport, where he spoke behind a wall of bulletproof glass due to new security protocols following his assassination attempt in July.

There is no evidence that President Joe Biden or Harris influenced the Justice Department or prosecutors' decision to bring charges against the former president.

Trump has eschewed traditional debate preparation, preferring to hold rallies and events, while Harris has been living in seclusion in a historic downtown Pittsburgh hotel since Thursday, working with her staff.

Harris has so far agreed to a single debate, moderated by ABC.

At the rally, Trump explained his plans for “Drain the swamp” – a throwback to his successful 2016 campaign message, when he ran as an outsider who challenged the status quo. Despite spending four years in the Oval Office, Trump vowed again: “Drive out the corrupt political class” if he wins again and “For the first time in 60 years, meaningfully reduce our government’s surplus.”

As part of these efforts, he reiterated his plan announced on Thursday to create a new “Commission for Government Efficiency” under the leadership of Elon Musk, who is responsible for carrying out “a comprehensive financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” to eliminate waste.

After again slandering the congressional committee investigating his supporters’ attack on the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, following his election defeat in 2020, Trump told the crowd of thousands that he “to rapidly review the cases of all political prisoners who have been unjustly victims of the Harris regime” and sign their pardons on his first day after returning to office.

Trump has repeatedly defended people who have been imprisoned for crimes such as violent attacks on police officers.

And he said he would “complete overhaul” what he called “Kamala’s corrupt Ministry of Injustice.”

“Instead of going after Republicans, they will focus on dismantling bloodthirsty cartels, transnational gangs and radical Islamic terrorists,” he said.

Harris' campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika responded to his comments with a statement warning that if Trump were to be re-elected, “use his unchecked power to prosecute his enemies and pardon the insurrectionists who violently attacked our Capitol on January 6.”

Both Harris and Trump have been frequent voters in Wisconsin this year, a state where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than one percentage point. Several polls of Wisconsin voters conducted after Biden's withdrawal showed a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump.

Democrats view Wisconsin as one of their must-win states. “blue wall” states. Biden, who was in Wisconsin on Thursday, won the state in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes. Trump won it in 2016 by a slightly larger margin of nearly 23,000 votes.

While Trump was campaigning, Harris briefly interrupted her debate preparations and visited Penzey's Spices in Pittsburgh's Strip District, where she purchased several spice blends. A customer saw the Democratic candidate and began to openly cry when Harris hugged her and said: “We will get through this. We are all in this together.”

Harris said she was honored to be endorsed by two major Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming.

“People are exhausted by the division and the attempts to divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message in the debate would be that the country wants to be united.

“It is time to open a new chapter in the division,” she said. “It is time to bring our country together and forge a new path forward.”

Trump held his rally in the central Wisconsin town of Mosinee, population about 4,500, in Wisconsin's mostly rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in a purple state.

During his speech, he railed against Harris in dark and threatening language, claiming that if the woman he was calling “Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will live in a full-blown banana republic” governed by “Anarchy” And “Tyranny.”

Trump also railed against the administration's border policy and called the Democrats' approach “suicidal” and accused her, “imported murderers, child molesters and serial rapists from all over the world.”

Many studies have found that immigrants, including those living in the country illegally, commit fewer violent crimes than natives. Violent crime rates in the United States fell again last year, continuing a downward trend after a spike during the pandemic.

He dismissed warnings from U.S. government officials about ongoing Russian attempts to spread misinformation ahead of the November election, including an indictment last week alleging that a media outlet linked to six conservative influencers is secretly funded by employees of Russian state media.

“The Justice Department said Russia could interfere in our elections again,” Trump told the crowd. “And you know, this time the whole world laughed about it.”

Among those present was Dale Osuldsen, who celebrated his 68th birthday at his first Trump rally on Saturday. He hopes that a second Trump administration “Cancel culture” and return the country to its “founding past”.

“Previous administrations have repeatedly said they wanted to fundamentally change America,” said Osulden. “Fundamentally changing America is a bad thing.”

Many of her supporters drove hours from across Wisconsin to hear Trump's speech, and some came from even further afield.

Sean Moon, a Tennessee musician who releases rap music under the stage name MAGA, “King Bullethead”, blared his songs from a truck in the event parking lot. As a musician, he said Trump rallies are similar to the experience of a loud concert.

“Trump is a rock star” Said Moon. “He's unbelievable. People see that he represents them and that the deep state is trying to kill him and take him out. But he stands firm and represents the everyday person.”

Democrats are banking on high turnout in the state's two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, to counter Republican strength in rural areas like Mosinee and the Milwaukee suburbs. Trump needs to win votes in places like Mosinee to have any chance of weakening the Democrats' lead in urban areas.

The Republicans held their national convention in Milwaukee in July and Trump has already visited the state four times, most recently last week in the city of La Crosse in western Wisconsin.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had met last month at the same Milwaukee arena where the Republicans held their convention for a rally that coincided with the Democratic convention in Chicago, just 90 miles away. Walz returned to Milwaukee on Monday, where he spoke at a Labor Day rally organized by unions.

___

Bauer reported from Madison and Colvin from New York. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.