Trump tells people to vote on ‘Jan. 5,’ and five other scratch-your-head moments
Former President Donald Trump left voters scratching their heads on Monday after he urged his supporters to show up at the ballot box to cast their votes for him. The only problem is that he got the date wrong.
While Election Day is on Nov. 5, Trump thought he had an extra two months to turn out the vote.
“I’ll tell you, if everything works out and everybody gets out on Jan. 5 or before,” Trump told a crowd at a campaign rally in Oaks, Pennsylvania. The Republican presidential nominee went on to falsely claim that “you can vote two months before, probably three months after.”
Trump’s election date blunder came as he bragged about his poll numbers with Black and Hispanic voters being “through the roof.”
The Harris campaign quickly pounced on Trump’s flub, asking on Instagram, “Does he even know where he is?”
At a rally Sunday in Greenville, North Carolina, Harris said, “It makes you wonder, why does his staff want him to hide away? Are they afraid that people will see that he is too weak and unstable to lead?”
These types of blunders from Trump aren’t a new phenomenon. He has repeatedly made incoherent, false and outlandish statements while on the campaign trail.
Here are five other scratching-your-head moments from Trump.
1. Calling Americans the “enemy from within”
During an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump railed against the “radical left lunatics” and “bad people,” calling them “the enemies from within.” The former commander-in-chief went as far as to say that they are “more dangerous” than enemies in Russia and China.
“These people should be put in jail the way they talk about our judges and our justices,” he said.
The presidential hopeful said the so-called enemies “should be very easily handled by” the National Guard or “if really necessary” by the U.S. military.
This isn’t the first time that Trump has signaled that he is willing to use the powers of the presidency to weaponize the National Guard or military in unorthodox and violent ways.
He has threatened to send the nation’s service men and women to predominantly Black cities like Chicago to address crime.
During her rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Monday, Harris lambasted Trump’s statements, saying, “He’s talking about that he considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country.”
Harris clarified that Trump has considered a range of people an enemy, including journalists “whose stories he doesn’t like,” election officials “who refuse to cheat … by finding extra votes for him,” judges who “insist on following the law.”
She continued, “This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America — and dangerous.”
The vice president added, “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged.”
2. Calls for “one really violent day”
Similarly, Donald Trump has called for sanctioning a day of violence at the hands of law enforcement to address crime in the United States.
While in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump suggested policing by force in inner cities across the country would put a stop to crime.
“One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out, and it will end immediately,” Trump told the crowd of supporters.
Though the Trump campaign attempted to clean up the former president’s remarks as him simply “floating it in jest,” the Republican presidential nominee has a history of floating the idea of using violence on U.S. citizens at his order.
During the height of the Black Lives Matter uprising protests in 2020, Trump threatened to sick “vicious dogs” on protesters in Washington, D.C.
3. Insulting Detroit — while in Detroit
While campaigning in Detroit last week, Trump indirectly insulted the city of Detroit while attempting to slam Harris.
“The whole country will be like … you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit,” Trump said at the Detroit Economic Forum. “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president … We’re not going to let her do that to this country. We’re not gonna let it happen.”
Trump was promptly slammed for insulting Detroit, particularly because he said it while in Detroit — a major populous city in the battleground state of Michigan, which he needs to win in November.
“Detroit is a city of innovation and heart. We are survivors and have always fought for what we believe in,” Marseille Allen, a political consultant from Detroit, previously told theGrio. Allen said of Trump, “If the man who aligns himself with dictators thinks poorly of my city, the grittiest city in our nation, then we are clearly on the right track.”
She added, “Keep my city out of your mouth.”
In response to Trump’s comment, Harris said, “Someone who spends full-time attacking great American cities is unfit to be president of the United States.”
4. Accuses Haitians of eating animals
Trump’s probably most perplexing comments as a presidential nominee have been his amplifying of lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating neighbors’ cats and dogs — a conspiracy and lie first made public by his vice presidential running mate, JD Vance.
Trump repeated the lie during his presidential debate against Harris, saying, “A lot of town don’t want to talk about it because they are so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
As bizarre as the claims are, they have resulted in real consequences for Haitians living in Springfield and beyond, so much so that the immigrant and migrant advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance filed a criminal complaint against Trump and Vance.
“It is imperative that we hold them accountable, and we bring them to justice so that they know they cannot continue to terrorize an entire community,” Guerline Jozef, executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, previously told theGrio.
Jozef described the pet conspiracy as “rooted in anti-Black racism and white supremacist ideology.”
5. Trump warns of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected
Having already been responsible for instigating a violent white mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, following his decisive defeat to President Joe Biden, Trump warned that there would be a “bloodbath” if he again loses in the 2024 election.
“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath … that’s the least of it,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Ohio on March 17.
Democratic strategist Joel Payne previously told theGrio that the twice-impeached, four-times-indicted Trump “uses political violence as a rhetorical weapon” and has “done it for a long time.”
In response to his “bloodbath” remark, the then-Biden-Harris campaign released a memo detailing what was essentially Trump’s greatest hits of encouraging or downplaying violence, including infamously telling white nationalist groups to “stand back and stand by” when asked to condemn white supremacy and violence.
The campaign noted other incidents — like when Trump encouraged his supporters to “knock out” hecklers disrupting his campaign rallies or declared there was “blame on both sides” after white supremacists held a violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“…[Trump] has spent every moment since his first campaign encouraging and excusing political violence. Repeatedly,” said Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika at the time.
Concerns about more political violence in the U.S. following Jan. 6 remain as Trump continues to suggest that he will not accept the results of the 2024 presidential election if he loses.
The stakes are even higher for Trump as he faces criminal indictments and civil penalties worth half a billion dollars related to fraud and defamation. The former president – who knows the office protects him from prosecution – would likely be shielded from legal harm if elected back into the White House.