Donald Trump wants people to 'ask Obama' about rigged elections. This is what he means.
Donald Trump appeared at the Trump National Doral Miami on Tuesday to boast that 80 percent of the resort's employees are Hispanic. As he was making his way through the press afterward, though, Trump was bombarded with questions about rigged elections.
"Do you still think the election is going to be stolen from you?" someone can be heard asking in a clip captured by CNN's Jeremy Diamond. "Ask Obama," Trump replies. "Tell him to look at his tape when he was running eight years ago."
The Daily Caller appears to have posted the video Trump is talking about over the weekend. During a campaign stop at Kent State University in Ohio in 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked, "I would just like to know what you can say to reassure us that this election will not be rigged or stolen?"
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"Well, I can tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we got Democrats in charge of the machines," Obama said to applause. Obama added after a pause: "Look, I come from Chicago, so I want to be honest, it's not as if it's just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too."
Last week, Obama claimed that there is "no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections."
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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