(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) At a rally Thursday in the Bronx, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump put blue-state Democrats on notice that he was going after their territory while eyeing the biggest red-wave election in 40 years as his aspiration.
During the North Carolina Republican convention a day later in Greensboro, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, who is now the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, explained how the RNC intended to pull off such a feat in the age of systemic election stealing, following a brutal series of three disappointing election cycles under her predecessor, Ronna Romney McDaniel.
Just like Trump’s speech in New York’s Crotona Park, it involves going into uncharted territory where only Democrats have dared to venture in the past. The strategy is one that Donald Trump and many others in MAGA nation have not only scoffed at, but openly denounced as a conduit to fraud.
However, with rules that were controversial—and, in some cases, illegal—having since become codified in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan that lost the last battle, there is no choice but to follow their lead rather than trying to go against the prevailing current.
“Listen, we can’t play the game the same way and think we’re going to win—we have to fight fire with dynamite,” said Lara Trump, who was joined onstage by her husband, Eric, the second son of the once and future president.
LEARNING TO LOVE LEFTIST SHENANIGANS
For North Carolina, which allows those who submitted absentee ballot requests to begin voting two months before the election, vote-banking will become a key strategy. The state’s in-person voting begins on Oct. 17, with same-day registration available, according to the Board of Elections.
“What Donald Trump has said—and what we are encouraging people to do as well is—any way you can vote, and as early as you can vote, get your vote banked,” Lara Trump said.
She emphasized that the overarching goal of the strategy was to get Republicans back in control so that they could ideally enact legislation that would make election integrity the law of the land, including a single day of in-person voting as the U.S. Constitution specifically stipulates.
Nonetheless, she conceded that the 20 extra days of voting was something Republicans could use to their advantage as well—provided there were people watching at every step of the way to ensure chain-of-custody rules were respected and that poll-watchers were there to ensure no wee-hours ballot dumps muddled the official tally.
“Listen, life happens, right? You never know what can happen day to day—you might get sick, your kids might have an issue, something happens at work and you don’t want to wait and miss your opportunity to get your vote banked,” Lara Trump reasoned.
“We have to make it too big to rig in this election cycle, so we want you to go vote early—the very first day you can—and then we want you to work from that day, every single day up to Election Day taking people to the polling location,” she continued. “Take them there—make sure you get them engaged, make sure you get them voting.”
In addition to vote-banking, Lara Trump also previewed another major component to the RNC’s new pathway to victory that was likely to raise some eyebrows in the audience.
“The Democrats have been doing something for years that we have never undertaken as a party, and that is legal ballot-harvesting,” she said.
“So, everywhere in this country we can legally ballot-harvest, look out for an operation headed up by the RNC,” she added. “If they can do it, so can we, and we’re going to beat them at their own game.”
COUNT EVERY VOTE (EXCEPT WHEN REPUBLICANS WIN…)
As Lara Trump—a Wilmington native who helped deliver the state to her father-in-law in 2016 and 2020—is well aware, ballot harvesting is not legal in North Carolina.
In fact, the prohibition on it resulted in an ironic reversal of roles for Democrats during the 2018 election cycle, after a close race in the 8th Congressional District resulted in allegations against winning Republican candidate Mark Harris, a Baptist minister.
In an effort to steal the seat from Harris following his narrow victory, the Democrat National Committee sent notorious lawyer Marc Elias to Raleigh to argue the case against the alleged GOP ballot-harvester, despite Elias having successfully reversed several noteworthy elections by finding mysteriously uncounted bags of ballots after the fact.
Although Harris, following a dramatic hearing, opted to drop out of the do-over election, the story may have had a happy ending all around. Then-state Sen. Dan Bishop, a staunch pro-values Republican, was decisively elected (and re-elected twice thereafter), becoming a powerful voice on the House weaponization subcommittee and a member of the Freedom Caucus.
Frustrated by all the stagnation and red tape in Congress, Bishop is now running to be the state attorney general, where he hopes to have a greater impact in fighting the sort of lawfare attacks being waged by left-wing (mostly Soros-funded) activists.
Running to replace him is none other than Harris, who won his primary in a district that is now much more conservative, eliminating the need for any of the aggressive get-out-the-vote practices he had previously solicited from backwoods .
As for Elias, the ethically challenged litigator was seemingly forced to resign from his old law firm, Perkins Coie, after it drew the scrutiny of special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the Russia-collusion hoax.
However, he continues to aggressively seek ways to undermine election integrity and to fight the GOP at every turn, underscoring the need for leaders like Bishop to fight back in the courtroom.
The legal challenges being waged by Elias and other lawfare activists played no small part in the personnel changes that Donald Trump made at the RNC after locking up the Republican nomination in March.
As his son Eric said, the Trump team actively engaged in “RINO hunting” to weed the national party of any disloyal careerists who might secretly seek to undermine Trump’s populist movement in the hopes of restoring a Bush dynasty.
During the Friday night dinner presentation in North Carolina, Eric Trump even got his father on the phone for a roughly five-minute call. (Trump, who personally attended the NC convention in 2023, had a rare night of downtime on Friday before a scheduled speech on Saturday at the Libertarian Party convention in Washington, D.C.)
While Eric and Laura were joined by new NCGOP chairman Jason Simmons, Donald Trump has a special commendation for RNC co-chair Michael Whatley, who was due to appear at the convention on Saturday alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.
He noted that Whatley has stood out from other state leaders in his efforts to fight the fraud in 2020.
@realDonaldTrump calls into the #NCGOP with #EricTrump and #RNC co-chair #LaraTrump and reveals why #MichaelWhatley won the job from @RonnaMcDaniel. The short answer: Republicans are ready to #LawyerUp. @marceelias get ready to lose. pic.twitter.com/QlowLB9J4u
— Ben Sellers (@realbensellers) May 25, 2024
“There was never so much cheating in the history of elections as that—they used COVID to cheat,” said the former president.
However, “… Michael Whatley did a fantastic job,” Trump added. “The reason we took him is that he stayed steady. He had 600 different lawyers working that night. They were watching the election fraud. … Michael did the best job … so we took North Carolina and we put him in charge of the RNC along with Laura.
Listen to Trump’s entire phone call here:
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
