Republicans scrambled frantically on Sunday in an attempt to clarify Donald Trump's words at a weekend rally where he conjured alarming visions of elections that Adolph Hitler cancelled in Nazi Germany with rambling remarks this weekend at a religious rally in Florida.
“Get out and vote just this time," Trump told the crowd. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years it will be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."
Speaking at a Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit on Friday in West Palm Beach, Trump doubled down on the promise that Republicans are claiming now that he either didn't mean or had taken out of context.
"You’ve got to get out and vote," Trump contended. "In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
The scenario that the former American president outlined and repeated follows the same line of thinking that Hitler employed when he prevented Germans from voting during the final seven years of World War II after establishing himself as a dictator in the 1930s. Hitler - in contrast - didn't show his hand before he did away with free elections in the country that he ruled and terrorized until he killed himself before Americans who were closing in could do the job themselves.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu led the charge for Trump apologists when he claimed on Sunday in an interview on national television that the ex-president didn't really mean what he'd said.
Calling the remark "a classic Trumpism" in an exchange with Martha Raddatz on the ABC News show This Week, Sununu ventured to guess that Trump was talking about the United States of America getting fixed if he defeats Kamala Harris at the polls this fall.
“Obviously we want everybody to vote in all elections," Sununu said. "I think he was just trying to make a hyberbolic point that it can be fixed as long as he gets back into office and all that.”
Sununu is one in a long line of prominent Republicans like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Texan Ted Cruz who've damaged their credibility substantially after taking back the stinging criticism they'd leveled at Trump before he claimed the presidential nomination for the third time in a row this year. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Sununu share the same general campaign consultant in New Hampshire's Dave Carney.
Sununu didn't say whether the babbled comments on fixed elections could be a sign of Trump's age and possible onset of mental deterioration as a 78-year-old who will be older in four years than Biden is now at 81
After claiming for months that Biden no longer had the mental fitness that the job of president requires, Republicans can expect Harris and the Democrats to make Trump's age the dominating issue in the race.
more to come ...
