Trump's attempts to explain his controversial comments fall flat

Trump was quickly attacked for his remarks, which made it seem as if he was saying there may not be another election if he was elected again, and in an attempt to figure out what the former president meant, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked him about his remarks during a July 29th interview.

The New Republic reported Trump gave Ingraham a very weird answer that didn't provide any insight into his July 26th comments when she asked him about his remarks. However, Trump eventually returned to the questions and said: “That statement is very simple."

"I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again.’ It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group,” the former president explained according to The Hill.

“You meant you won’t have to vote for you because you have four years in office. Is that what you meant?” Ingraham asked Trump. However, the former president did answer her question directly, though he eventually offered up an explanation.

“Christians do not vote well. They vote in very small percentages. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they’re disappointed in things that are happening,” Trump said. “I say, ‘You don’t vote. I’m saying go out, you must vote.’ But I said to the Christians in the room, thousands of them. I said, ‘Typically, Christians do not vote.’

“’Don’t worry about the future,’” Trump continued. “’You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed … We won’t even need your vote anymore because, frankly, we will have such love,’” the former president added.

The explanation from the former president about his comments does make sense if his remarks are viewed as a badly worded way of saying he would fix the country over four years in such a way that Christians wouldn't need to vote again. But let's take a look at what he said at the Believers’ Summit and the resulting responses.

While giving his address at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, promised to “once again appoint rock-solid conservative judges who will protect religious liberty” according to Rolling Stone, but that wasn’t the remark that set off a frenzy of concerned headlines in the media.

The former president recited what Rolling Stone called his “unfounded claims” about mail-in voting before he went into a mini rant about how he needed Christian voters to head to the polls in November and vote for him if they did so, they wouldn't need to vote again according to Trump.

“Christians, get out and vote!” Trump yelled at the crowd. “Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine!” the former president added. Seems worrying, right? Well, Trump got more direct. 

“You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians!” Trump continued. “You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.” 

What the former president meant when he told the crowd that in four years they wouldn't need to vote again was the topic of much speculation at the time, and the Democratic response painted Trump as a would-be dictator. 

The Chair of the Democratic National Committee Jaime Harrison linked Trump’s July 26th comments to remarks he made in December 2023 while speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity about wanting to be a dictator for only a day according to Newsweek.

“The crazed ramblings from the Dictator on Day 1…  he’s fixing it so “‘you won’t have to vote again’,” Harrison wrote on the social media platform X, posted alongside a video of Trump speaking at the Believers' Summit. 

“You like your freedom?! You sure as h*** better be ready to protect it! Get Registered and Vote!” Harrison employed, and he wasn’t the only member of the Democratic Party to react to the former president’s worrying words. 

Washington Representative and member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal also took to X to write, “This. Is. Terrifying. We cannot let this be the case,” about the former president’s comments in Florida. 

The Atlantic’s Brian Klaas may have had one of the most interesting takes on the former president’s comments and wrote his remarks represented “an extraordinary departure from democratic norms in the United States.”

Klass explained that rarely has a major “party’s presidential candidate directly stated his aim to make elections meaningless, a notorious hallmark of autocracy.” But how should Americans interpret Trump’s statement? Klass had a few answers. 

Klass suggested Trump could be implying that if he is elected again, there would not be any more elections in the United States, imagining himself as the American version of China’s Xi Jinping. But there was also a more subdued way to view Trump's remarks as well. 

A "more charitable" interpretation of Trump’s remarks according to Klass could see the former president's comments meaning that his presidency would be so good for Christians that they wouldn't need to vote again in 2028. This was seemingly what Trump explained to Ingraham during their interview. 

If Christian voters got everything they could ever want from Trump, they certainly might feel like they would never need to vote again. But how might such policies affect the rest of the country? Regardless of which interpretation is true, it's a problem for the country.

“Both interpretations lead to the same conclusion: that Trump is telegraphing his authoritarian intentions in plain sight, hoping to sever the link between voters and government policy,” Klass wrote. However, there may be a third possible interpretation. 

Trump’s remarks could have just been the former president going off-teleprompter and just saying whatever crazy thing popped into his head that he believed would sway the audience and American Christians to his side in November, and his explanation may have been a clever way to cover up a vector of attack now being used by his political opposition. 

The former president has a long track record of riffing about whatever in order to get his audience revved up and excited. Trump’s comments at the Believer’s Summit may have been just another example, but only time and a successful election win will reveal the truth. 

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