Former US President Donald Trump held his first political rally of the new year at the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds in Florence, Arizona, on January 15. In his speech he continued to state his baseless claims of a stolen election. He further said that he actually won the state of Arizona in 2020, despite having lost the state to President Biden at 49.4% to 49.1%.
“I love Arizona. We had a tremendous victory in Arizona that was taken away and I just want to wish everybody a happy New Year. We’re going to have, I think, a great year,” Trump said shortly after taking the stage to loud cheers. Last year we had a rigged election and the proof is all over the place,” he continued. “We have a lot of proof and they know it’s proof. They always talk about the Big Lie — they’re the Big Lie.”
These claims came after the authorities of Arizona’s second largest county concluded that out of 151 cases of voter fraud they detected, none of them warranted criminal charges. The Associated Press ran their own investigation on potential voter fraud in the state of Arizona and found less than 200 cases, until last week. When election officials in Maricopa County — the state’s largest — said they had discovered 38 potential voting fraud cases during an exhaustive review of 2.1 million ballots.
Trump also mentioned the rioters that are being prosecuted for the January 6 riots on capitol hill, “On top of it all, people are being persecuted for using freedom of speech to talk about the corrupt election but more and more information is coming out and it’s coming out far worse than anyone ever thought it could be.”
He made several scathing statements against his counterparts in Washington, saying things like they were done with those sitting in Washington trying to run their lives. "The radical Democrats want to turn the United States into a communist country. We won those elections. We won them big. We can't let them get away with it. If an election were held today, we would trounce them so badly in a landslide in every way, just as we really did on Nov. 3. We trounced them. If we had an honest press, the election would have been much different," Trump added.
Several speakers at the rally supported and reiterated his unfounded claims, the most significant one being Kari Lake. She is the candidate that Trump has endorsed for Governor for the race in Arizona this year. She is someone who has pushed the stolen election narrative and has threatened to put the state’s top officials in prison.
Even with certifiable proof of a fair election, Trump supporters still refuse to believe that the elections were fair. Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPilliow being a very prominent example. He has spent millions of dollars trying to prove that Trump won the election. His issue is with the fact that machines were used to count the ballots. With incidents like this, it is hard to imagine how people to this date continue to reject facts and deny reality.
References:
1. WION Web Team. (2022, January 16). Donald Trump reiterates claims that 2020 US presidential election was stolen. WION. https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-reiterates-claims-that-2020-us-presidential-election-was-stolen-445173
2. Reilly, P. (2022, January 16). Trump repeats claims that 2020 election was stolen at first rally of new year. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2022/01/16/ex-president-donald-trump-claims-2020-election-was-stolen-at-first-rally-in-arizona/
Comments