Donald Trump held a rally for the second time in as many days, this time in Juneau, Wisconsin, on Sunday following his return to Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. It was his fourth event in Wisconsin in eight days, signifying the swing state’s importance as we inch closer to Election Day.
Trump didn’t venture far from his typical tropes on Sunday: he fear-mongered about migrants (“the horrible people that we’re allowing into our country that are destroying our country,” he claimed of migrants, saying the issue was the most important of this election); claimed that if he loses, the U.S. is over (“If we lose this election, this country’s finished,” he claimed); kept up his obsession with crowd sizes; and he also inexplicably decided to revisit his unhinged admission that he wants to be dictator for one day.
“So I have to be careful with this,” Trump said. “I said once about a month ago, you only have to vote this one time, and after that, everything would be good,” he claimed on Sunday. What he appeared to be referring to was his statement in July, when he claimed during a Florida event summit that if he was elected for a second time, “you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
“And the fake news said, ‘See, he wants to be a dictator and take over the country.’ No, no, that’s not what I said,” he said Sunday, in an apparent attempt to tamp down concerns that he wants to be a dictator. “We got to fix the country. Got to make sure, and then the country will be great, and we’re going to have, hopefully, some great person, whether it’s J.D. or somebody else.”
However, Trump then brought up Sean Hannity asking about his seeming aspirations to be a dictator, and explained it thusly: “’You don’t want to be a dictator, do you?’” he said Hannity asked him. “I said, ‘Sean, I only want to be a dictator for one day, and I’m going to close the borders and drill, baby drill. But after that, I never want to be a dictator.’”
The former president claimed the media had wrongfully clipped short his comments about wanting to be a dictator, to remove the distinction that he only wants to be a dictator for one day. “The fake news took that answer and they said, ‘Sean, I want to be a dictator.’ Clip. Cut,” he said, adding: “These are the worst people.”
So… nothing to worry about, then. Relatedly, Trump also recently fantasized about giving police one “really violent day” to crack down on retail crime.
Wisconsin is an important battleground state in the presidential election and typically sees tight races, but Republicans have only taken the state once in the last four decades, which was when Hillary Clinton ignored the state and Trump won it in 2016.
Trump will appear next in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for a pair of events on Wednesday. His running mate J.D. Vance will deliver remarks in Detroit on Tuesday.
