Former President Donald Trump told attendees at a conservative Christian event on Friday night that they “won’t have to vote anymore” if he is elected into office in November. He implored Christians to save America by voting “just this time,” so that he can win the presidential election in a landslide “that’s too big to rig.”
Trump, who is the Republican Party’s candidate for president, made his remarks at the end of a speech at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“Christians get out and vote. Just this time,” he urged. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians.”
Trump continued: “I love you Christians and I’m a Christian. I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
On social media, there were some calls of alarm in response to Trump’s comments, expressing concern that they alluded to authoritarianism and could be interpreted as an indication that he would not leave office if he wins the election.
“Democracy is in danger. This is not a drill,” posted Allison Gill, who co-hosts the podcast “Jack”, along with an image displaying Trump’s message to Christians.
Toward the end of his hour-long speech, Trump said that the Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election – which Trump falsely maintained that he won over President Biden.
The audience gave him a standing ovation, chanting: “Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight” and fist-pumping the way Trump did after a bullet grazed his ear during an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania two weeks ago.
Trump shared that he had removed the last bandage from his ear just before speaking at the event.
“I just took it off. I took it off for this group. I don’t know why I did that for this group, but that’s it,” he said.
Before Friday night’s event, Trump had first been wearing a large white bandage over his ear. By the time of his rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday, he was wearing a more discreet flesh-colored one.
CBS News reached out to the Trump campaign for comment on his remarks.
Trump spoke to about a few hundred people in a packed audience at the summit just hours after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago. Netanyahu met with Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris separately a day earlier at the White House.
He spent much of his speech criticizing Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president after President Biden decided to drop his reelection bid.
Other speakers at the two-day event, which focused on “unity and biblical truth,” included former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, Dr. Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary during the Trump administration and conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
Navarro, who was recently released from prison, spoke shortly before Trump and led the audience in a chant of: “If we don’t control our government, their government will control us.”
He told the audience that the justice system had unfairly gone after him, using rhetoric similar to that often used by Trump.
“What happened to me, can happen to you,” said Navarro. “If they can come for Donald Trump, they can come for you.”
Navarro served a four-month sentence for defying a congressional subpoena defying a congressional subpoena. He was released earlier this month.
The former president has previously sought to appeal to evangelical Christians.
In June, he told a group of politically influential evangelical Christians in Washington that they “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” of the 2024 election, imploring them at one point to “go and vote, Christians, please!”