Donald Trump has claimed that he won all 50 states in the 2020 US election at a Florida event where two of his rivals for the Republican presidential primaries were booed for suggesting the party should dump the former president before his legal woes catch up with him.
Key points:
- The former president continues to peddle discredited conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election
- Mr Trump is the overwhelming favourite to be the Republican Party presidential nominee for 2024
- He is expected to appear as a witness this week in a New York civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization
Mr Trump faces 91 criminal charges across four indictments, two of which are related to election interference.
He is set to testify on Monday at his New York civil fraud trial, after two of his children took to the witness stand last week.
Despite soundly losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes — 306 to 232 in the electoral college — Mr Trump continues to push discredited claims of widespread election fraud.
“We won, the last time, 50 states, think of it, 50 states,” he told the Freedom Summit, outside Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night.
“We won every state. We then did great in the election. We got 12 million more votes or so … 12 million more votes than we got the first time.
“The whole thing is a lie … the whole election is a lie.”
While Mr Trump attracted more support in 2020 than in his upset 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton, Mr Biden flipped the states of Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia for 74 crucial electoral college votes.
Earlier in the evening, former state governors Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie urged the party to move past Mr Trump — ahead of the latter’s criminal and civil trials — to boost its chances of winning the 2024 election.
“There is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offence next year,” said Mr Hutchinson, the Arkansas governor between 2015 and 2023 who was also a federal prosecutor and defence lawyer for more than 25 years.
“That may or may not happen before you vote [in the Republican primaries] in March, and it might not make any difference to you, but it will make a difference for our chances to attract independent voters in November.
“While some will ignore the destructive behaviour of the former president, I assure you, we ignore it at our own peril.
“It will weaken the GOP for decades to come.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a one-time friend and advisor who has become Mr Trump’s most vocal Republican critic, having broken with the ex-TV reality star after the 2020 election, was also booed by the audience and heckled as a “loser” and a “traitor”.
“We deserve once again, better character in the White House than what we’ve had from the last three presidents,” Mr Christie said.
“Every one of those boos, every one of those cat calls, and every one of those yells, will not solve one problem we face in this country and will not make this country [better]. Your anger against the truth is reprehensible.”
Mr Christie and Mr Hutchinson, who are both polling at less than 3 per cent, were speaking on the same bill as Mr Trump, who has 58.3 per cent support, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Florida will also be the venue for the third presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday, which Mr Trump is again expected to skip, holding his own, alternative event.
The state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who is considered Mr Trump’s closest challenger but with a meagre 14 per cent support, failed to land a punch on the man who once endorsed him but has since become a political enemy.
It was the first time the two took to the same stage in Florida since Mr DeSantis declared his presidential candidacy in May.
His faltering campaign took another hit on the night with several Florida politicians — who were once his loyal supporters — coming on the stage with Mr Trump to pledge their allegiance, in front of a “Florida is Trump country” sign.
But Mr DeSantis said that his gubernatorial success in Florida in attracting independents made him a better presidential candidate than Mr Trump after “winnable elections have been blown year-after-year over the last three election cycles with the brand of Republicans becoming toxic”.
“[In Florida] we have people that have been Democrats and Independents and they’re flipping to become registered Republicans,” he said.
“People associate what we do here as Republicans in Florida with success, with freedom, with leadership and this is something they want to be a part of it and that is not happening in most other states in this country.”
After several recent gaffes — including getting Sioux City, Iowa, mixed up with Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in a speech last week as he drummed up support ahead of the Iowa primary — Mr Trump took fewer missteps in his Florida address.
But he did again repeat that Victor Orban’s Hungary bordered on Russia, which it does not. The countries are about 1,000 kilometres apart at their closest point.
In a previous speech, he said Mr Orban was the leader of Turkey.