MILWAUKEE — Four years ago, Republicans sought to throw out the 2020 presidential election results and disenfranchise millions of Americans based on false allegations of widespread voter fraud, fueling a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Now, despite Trump’s triumphant return to the top of the Republican Party, and polling that shows him positioned to retake the White House, Republicans are making election fraud a running theme at this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
And there’s one group the GOP is stoking fears about more than any other ahead of the November election: illegal immigrants.
“We cannot allow the many millions of illegal aliens they allowed to cross our borders, harm our citizens, or disrupt our elections. We will not allow it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who led the legal effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, said in a speech on Tuesday.
Other top Republicans were even more explicit about a supposed plot by Democrats to flood the country with illegal voters.
“Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in his own remarks Tuesday night.
“[Democrats] want illegals to vote now that they opened the border,” added Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), who voted to overturn the 2020 election.
It’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and they rarely do. Johnson acknowledged earlier this year that his illegal voter conspiracy theory has “not been something that is easily provable.” But that’s not stopping Republicans from talking about it.
Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, who was impeached and criminally charged for trying to steal an election, accused Democrats of doing the same this time around in a recorded video message shown to RNC delegates.
“We must use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats. They are destroying our country,” Trump said. “Keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly it’s the only thing they do well.”
Donald Trump Jr. also told Axios on Tuesday that if his father loses in November it will be because of “cheating.”
In Milwaukee, West Virginia GOP Gov. Jim Justice described the 2024 election in ominous terms Tuesday, despite his party’s calls to tone down the political rhetoric following Trump’s attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend.
“The bottom line to every single thing that’s going on in this great country today is one thing: We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November,” Justice, the GOP Senate candidate who’s favored to replace Sen. Joe Manchin (I-Vt.) in the Senate, said in his speech on Tuesday.
The apocalyptic tone from some speakers at the GOP convention, in addition to Trump’s repeated hedging on promises to accept the results of the 2024 election, opens a path to another Jan. 6-type crisis. It is only compacted by Trump’s decision to surround himself with more true MAGA believers this time around than during his presidency.
For example, Trump’s new vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), said earlier this year he would not have certified the 2020 presidential election as required by the Constitution — and as was done by former Vice President Mike Pence, who has essentially been excommunicated from the GOP and was absent from this week’s convention.
“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance told ABC News in February.
The 2020 “fake elector plot” endorsed by Trump and his allies involved sending slates of phony electors to Congress in hopes of subverting the Electoral College process and denying Biden a victory. If that didn’t work, they’d hoped to kick the debate to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Because each state is afforded a single vote, and because more state delegations were controlled by Republicans, Trump would’ve won that debate.
On Wednesday at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, two of the most prominent architects of the plot — Trump’s former trade adviser, Peter Navarro, and longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone — received a hero’s welcome from thousands of cheering delegates. Navarro, who went to federal prison after refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena in the wake of Jan. 6, spoke on stage just hours after being released from jail and even bragged about taking part in the scheme.
“They convicted me, they jailed me. But guess what ― they did not break me. … I went to prison so you won’t have to. I am your wakeup call,” Navarro proclaimed, pumping his fist into the air defiantly as the crowd roared in approval.
Stone, who was convicted of crimes that included lying to Congress but whose sentence was later commuted by Trump, was treated like a celebrity and mobbed by delegates on the convention floor with requests for selfies and words of appreciation.
“I think it’s dishonest for the press to say the Republicans are lying that there was anything wrong with that election — there was,” Alaska GOP delegate Dave Donley said, citing accommodations to voting procedures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Milinda Morris, a delegate from Texas, said she worried that Democrats would steal the November election, suggesting that Republicans wouldn’t take it standing down.
“We have to outvote their cheating to ensure a win. We cannot be complacent or take anything for granted,” she said.
“If this election gets stolen, Trump won’t have to call for a meeting,” she added. “The Americans will be showing up on the doorsteps of Washington, D.C. themselves. This is where we draw a line in the sand. They will not do this to us again, and if they do, we’re going to have to do something about it.”