SALEM, Virginia – Former President Donald Trump Saturday touted a Supreme Court election integrity ruling that favored Republicans, but warned that Democrats are bound to cheat to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Supreme Court Wednesday allowed Virginia to purge an estimated 1,600 people from its voter rolls in an effort to stop ineligible noncitizens from voting on Tuesday.
“Good victory. We had a big victory on the voting at the Supreme Court, that was a great victory, wow,” Trump said during a Saturday night rally in Salem.
The visit to Virginia, which is not a traditional presidential battleground, featured speeches from Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares that highlighted the state’s effort to protect the vote, as rallygoers widely expressed skepticism of a free and secure election.
Since Trump lost the 2020 election and blamed his defeat on unproven widespread voter fraud and irregularities, states have passed laws to secure the vote and Republicans have filed scores of lawsuits to clean up procedures.
Trump praised Youngkin, who signed an executive order that directed the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to provide state election officials with regular data to cancel the voter registration of suspected noncitizens. He also gave a shoutout to Miyares, who filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the commonwealth to remove alleged non-citizens from voter rolls.
“Your Attorney General, Jason where’s Jason, what a job, Jason, what a job you’re doing,” Trump said.
Miyares celebrated the recent Supreme Court decision addressing rallygoers ahead of Trump’s speech.
“I don’t know if you follow the news, but I’ve been a little tied up with the U.S. Supreme Court recently. According to the legacy media, it’s really controversial. But, is it controversial that only American citizens vote in American elections,” he asked rhetorically as the crowd responded by yelling “no.”
The case is feeding into a wider political narrative by Trump and some Republicans about widespread voting by noncitizens, seizing on claims of illegal voting as part of the argument made to explain the former president’s loss in 2020. According to experts, voter fraud by noncitizens is very rare and there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in previous elections.
Federal law already requires voter registration forms to compel voters to swear under penalty of perjury that they are citizens of the United States. Individuals provide proof of a driver’s license or Social Security number for election officials to verify their identity in U.S. databases.
Election integrity has become a major flashpoint for Republicans as Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork for claims of a stolen election.
“I’d love to win the popular vote with them cheating,” Trump said, referring to Democrats. “You know, let them cheat, because that’s what they do. They do it very well. They’re very professional.”
The Washington Examiner spoke to over a dozen attendees and they overwhelmingly said they believed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
“I think the last election was stolen. I didn’t see any evidence of it personally, but in my heart I know it was,” said Sharon Bibb, 68, who lives in Fishersville.
Courtney Ellis, 58, who lives in Christianville is concerned about the number of noncitizens who could still be voting in the election despite the Supreme Court’s most recent decision.
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“These are just the ones that Youngkin caught,” he said, alluding to the executive order. “I’m sure there’s a lot more going on. You’ve got to get out, vote early, flood the vote red and pray for the best, that’s all you can do.”
Ellis, who works at Volvo and is a member of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, said he believes a number of recent elections have been “stolen” and is worried “history will repeat itself.”
“I don’t know if I’ll trust the outcome even if Trump wins, I think the Democrats are crooked, a lot of them, burning ballots, holding up the mail-in-ballots,” he said.
Sandra Duncan, 56, a software engineer that lives in Blacksburg was one of the few supporters who do not believe the last election was stolen.
“I think there probably was some shenanigans, numbers and some things that happened that you know that were fraudulent, but my personal opinion is that it probably wasn’t of sufficient magnitude to where it would change the outcome,” Duncan explained. “I think we would have seen probably some more of the proof.”
Duncan also went on to praise Youngkin’s pursuit to remove suspected noncitizens from the voter rolls, emphasizing that the effort could “preserve greater confidence” among voters who are concerned about cheating.
“I think that it’s not as big of an issue as maybe we’re worried it could be. But, I still think that efforts like what Youngkin is doing is helping to preserve greater confidence. And I think that’s really what it’s all about, confidence in the process,” she said.
Republicans say Virginia is ripe for red takeover
Trump’s trip to the commonwealth comes as Republicans are openly floating the idea that 2024 will be the year that Virginia could shift from the Democratic column and into the battleground category. Virginia used to be a top battleground in 2008 and 2012 but has voted for Democrats in the last four presidential cycles.
A new poll released Friday by the Institute for Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College shows Harris with a 10-point lead over Trump. Another from Washington Post-Schar School gives Harris a six-point edge over Trump. An average of recent polling puts Harris up by nearly six points overall.
While Trump lost in Virginia in both 2016 and 2020, some GOP insiders in the state think victory remains within reach, pointing to two separate polls, one conducted by the conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports and another from the University of Mary Washington that show the former president cutting into Vice President Kamala Harris’s lead, putting Trump within striking distance.
“The Rasmussen poll validates what we have seen on the ground for the past four weeks,” said Brian Kirwin, a Republican operative in the state. “If you ask anyone working for Republican candidates in my neck of the woods, every day they call me and say ‘I’m working the early voting locations and it’s a red wave,’ our people are voting early. When we see it validated in a nationally recognized poll, we’re seeing something going on here.”
However, Kirwin also cautions against the optimism over the early voting turnout and questions whether Republicans’ strong showing in early voting will translate to victory.
“If all that is, is people who normally vote on Election Day voting early, it’s a wash, because, at the end of the day, a vote is a vote,” he said. “If Virginia is going to be competitive, we’ve got to match early Republican turnout with strong Election Day turn out.”
“That makes a rally in Virginia make total sense, because if Republican turnout numerically isn’t as strong on Tuesday, then we’re probably going to finish the way Virginia has finished the way Virginia has finished since 2004, that last time Virginia went Republican for president.”
In recent weeks, Trump has made detours from traditional battlegrounds, holding rallies at Madison Square Garden in New York City, in Coachella, California, and in New Mexico. The rallies satisfy the Republican nominee’s long-shot claims that he can win blue-leaning states creating the appearance of momentum by drawing large crowds in typically safe Democratic territory.
Trump’s allies believe there are advantages in these stops by lending a hand to down-ballot Republicans too, but others are worried that investing valuable time and resources in states outside of the traditional battleground could be something Trump’s team may ultimately regret.
“The race is a complete toss-up with no genuinely undecided voters left to persuade. It’s going to come down to turnout in Pennsylvania,” said Dennis Lennox, a Republican consultant based in Michigan.
“The problem is neither Virginia nor New Mexico are seriously competitive at this stage. Maybe the state of play would be different today had there been an investment of resources two or three months ago,” he explained. “I would have scheduled Trump for fly-ins at three Michigan airports over a rally so far off the trail in Virginia.”
Democrats in Virginia called Trump’s visit “another tired gimmick” to “rant and rave about conspiracy theories,” after the Supreme Court cleared the way for Virginia officials to remove 1,600 people from the state’s voter registration rolls.
“Trump is looking for fresh crowds in New Mexico and Virginia to rant and rave about conspiracies like Youngkin’s false conspiracy theories about voting,” Virginia Democratic Party Chairwoman Susan Swecker said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.
“Trump has done the same last-minute stunts in places like New Mexico in 2016 and Minnesota in 2020, only to get crushed. Virginians see through his empty theatrics—they keep rejecting his chaos every time,” she added.
Trump’s relationship with rising star Gov. Glenn Youngkin
The rally in rural Southwestern Virginia marks Trump’s first visit since Harris secured the nomination in August. Trump was last in Virginia, speaking to a large crowd in Chesapeake in June, gloating after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. His running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) visited Radford fresh off the Republican National Convention in July.
Around that same time is when the former president met with Youngkin at Trump National Golf Club in Loudoun County to discuss the prospects of flipping the commonwealth red, specifically talking about parts of the state where Youngkin won in 2021, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting.
Youngkin has continued to make the case that Virginia is in play and has Trump’s ear. The former president openly talked about their discussions during his rally.
“I called him about this, I said you think we should do it, he said ‘I’m telling you we can win.’ He’s worked so hard on this event, we spoke many many times Glenn, many many times,” Trump said.
While the state of the race has changed since Harris’s candidacy, Zack Roday, a Republican strategist in Virginia, who previously worked on Youngkin’s campaign, said he sees a lot of optimism, pointing to the popularity of the governor and a state legislature that is only narrowly controlled by Democrats.
“Why is the state in play – it dovetails with the idea – it’s two words, it’s Glenn Youngkin,” Roday explained in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“Glenn Youngkin being the governor matters, he’s got an approval rating in the high 50’s, he’s over 60 with independents, he’s popular in every single media market all of this really helps,” Roday explained in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
In 2021, the Republican defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe by 2 points, only a year after Biden carried the commonwealth by 10 points. Republicans also flipped a U.S. House seat in the 2nd congressional district in 2022 and came close to doing so in the 7th congressional district that year.
“My friends in Virginia, we know how to win elections. They told me back in 2021 no Republican can win statewide in Virginia and we stood up and said ‘no, we’re going to win,’ and we won,” Youngkin declared, speaking to supporters ahead of Trump’s speech.
Virginians it is time to lead again on Tuesday, we are going to extend our lead in the House, we are going to flip the Senate and we are going to put strength back in the White House with Donald J. Trump,” he said.
Trump is attempting to emulate Youngkin’s winning strategy, driving turnout in rural areas while keeping the margins in Northern Virginia, a Democratic stronghold, down.
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“I’m sure Governor Youngkin told him it was strong southwest turnout that helped him win the governor’s seat when people thought Virginia was blue and I guarantee you that was shared with Trump’s decision makers,” Kirwin said.
