- Trump told donors at a RNC event that party members would have to be "tougher" at the ballot box.
- "The vote counter is often more important than the candidate," he reportedly told the crowd.
- The former president has continued to baselessly claim that he won in 2020 against President Biden.
Former President Donald Trump during a Saturday speech to Republican National Committee donors continued to relitigate the 2020 election, arguing that Republicans needed to get "tougher" at the ballot box, according to The Washington Post.
"The vote counter is often more important than the candidate," Trump reportedly said, adding that he picked up the concept from conservative radio host Mark Levin. "We have to get a lot tougher and smarter at the polls."
He then leaned into his election fraud theories, stating that Republicans needed to be more vigilant about the tabulation process, despite there being no evidence of widespread election malfeasance in 2020.
Despite President Joe Biden having won both Georgia and Wisconsin in the 2020 election — with both states certifying the results without any proof of widespread fraud — Trump has continued to assert that he was victorious in those closely-contested electoral battlegrounds.
According to The Post, Trump, who began to discuss the past election roughly 45 minutes into his speech to RNC donors, argued that he must have won Georgia because of landslide victories in neighboring Alabama and South Carolina — despite the more conservative nature of the latter states.
Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million ballots cast; he also beat the former president in Wisconsin by roughly 20,000 votes out of almost 3.3 million ballots cast. Trump won 62% of the vote in Alabama — one of his best-performing states in the country — while he captured 55% of the vote in South Carolina.
Trump went on to falsely state that he was the winner in two presidential races, despite only emerging as the victor in the 2016 contest against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"We've already won two presidential elections," he reportedly said to the RNC donors. "And now I feel obligated that we have to really look strongly at doing it again ... We are looking at it very very strongly. We have to do it. We have to do it."
Since leaving the White House in January 2021, Trump has teased a 2024 presidential campaign during interviews and at rallies across the country, effectively locking out many contenders who could dominate the conservative lane but are deferring to the former president, who is still enormously popular among the Republican base.
However, former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday didn't hesitate to articulate his own vision for the direction of the GOP at the RNC event.
Pence urged Republicans in New Orleans to look ahead to the 2022 midterm elections, arguing that the party "cannot win by fighting yesterday's battles, or by relitigating the past."