Kamala Harris’ campaign has warned that Donald Trump “will rule as a dictator” if re-elected, after the Republican Party presidential nominee said he would lock up those “engaged in unconscionable conduct” during this year’s election.
Just days before his presidential debate with Harris, Trump took to his Truth Social site on Saturday to further his efforts to undermine the integrity of this year’s election, having previously dodged questions about whether he would accept the results of the November election.
In his messages, Trump baselessly accused Democrats of “widespread fraud and villainy” during the 2020 election and warned that the 2024 election “will be under the strictest professional supervision.”
“WHEN I WIN, the people who CHEATED will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, which will include long prison sentences, so that this perversion of justice can never happen again,” Trump wrote.
“Be aware that this legal exposure extends to lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters and corrupt election officials,” he added. “Those involved in unscrupulous conduct will be tracked down, caught and prosecuted at a level that has unfortunately never been seen before in our country.”
On Monday, Harris-Walz campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa responded to Trump’s comments.
“As we move toward the debate, an extreme and deranged Donald Trump is escalating his dangerous threats of revenge and retaliation,” Moussa said in a statement.
“With the help of his Supreme Court justices who gave him virtually unlimited immunity, and his Project 2025 allies who wrote the playbook to give Trump virtually unlimited, unchecked power, Trump is openly laying out how he will try to rule like a dictator from day one to take on his political enemies.”
“One more thing is clear: for Donald Trump, it’s all about himself,” the statement continued, adding that Trump was on a “self-obsessed revenge tour.”
Even before a single vote has been counted, Trump has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the results later this year, essentially replicating the same scenario he used after his 2020 defeat to President Joe Biden, when he insisted voter fraud had swayed the outcome.
In reality, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration have said he lost fair and square. Trump himself admitted last week that he lost “by a whisker.”
Revenge is a hallmark of his 2024 campaign.
“I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March last year at the start of his latest bid for the White House, according to The Guardian.
Trump has also admitted that he plans to act like a “dictator” if re-elected, but only on “day one” of a new administration.
