Former President Donald Trump Conservative Christians At an event on Friday night, Trump said Christians “won’t have to vote anymore” if he is elected president in November. He implored Christians to save America by voting “just this once” to help him win the presidential election with a landslide victory that “cannot be rigged.”
Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, made the remarks at the end of a speech at the Believers Summit, an event hosted by conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“My fellow Christians, go vote. Just this once,” he pleaded. “You don’t have to vote anymore. You have four more years. OK? The problem is solved. OK. My beautiful Christians, you don’t have to vote anymore.”
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Trump continued, “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you. You’ve got to go out and vote. In four years, you won’t have to vote anymore. We’re going to fix this so badly that you won’t have to vote.”
Some on social media expressed alarm at Trump’s comments, expressing concern that they hinted at authoritarianism and could be interpreted as a suggestion that he would not leave office if he won the election.
“Democracy is at stake. This is not a drill,” Allison Gill, co-host of the podcast “Jack,” posted alongside an image showing Trump’s message to Christians.
At the end of his hour-long speech, Trump said Democrats had rigged the 2020 presidential election, which he falsely claimed was won by President Biden.
The audience gave him a standing ovation, chanting “fight, fight, fight, fight, fight” and pumping their fists in the same way that Trump did when he grazed their ears during his speech. Assassination attempt At a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, two weeks ago.
Trump said he removed the last of the bandages from his ear just before speaking at the event.
“I just took it off. I took it off for this group. I don’t know why I did it for this group, but that’s it,” he said.
Before Friday night’s rally, Trump wore a large white bandage over his ear. At a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday, he wore a more discreet flesh-colored bandage.
CBS News has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on Trump’s remarks.
President Trump addressed a packed audience at the summit just hours later. meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Mar-a-Lago after meeting with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House the previous day. About 3,500 people attended Biden’s speech, according to organizers.
He spent much of his speech criticizing Harris, who is seen as the Democratic nominee to succeed President Biden. I decided to drop his reelection challenge.
Other speakers at the two-day event, which focused on “unity and biblical truth,” included former adviser to President Trump Peter Navarro, Dr. Ben Carson, who served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Trump Administration, and conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
Navarro, who was recently released from prison, spoke just before Trump and led the crowd in a chant: “If we don’t control our government, their government will control us.”
He told the audience that the justice system had unfairly hounded him, using rhetoric similar to that often used by President Trump.
“What happened to me can happen to you,” Navarro said. “If it can happen to Donald Trump, it can happen to you.”
Navarro served four months in prison for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. It was released earlier this month.
The former president has previously made efforts to appeal to evangelical Christians.
In June he A politically influential group of evangelical Christians in Washington He said he “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” of the 2024 election, at one point pleading, “Christians, please go vote!”
