25 August 2020

Donald Trump accuses Democrats of planning to ‘rig election’ on first day of Republican National Convention

President Trump has claimed the Democrats may try to ‘rig’ the US election during his speech on the first day of the Republican National Convention.

The 74 year-old doubled down on his belief that mail-in postal votes could lead to voter fraud, a theory which has been widely opposed.

Trump has struggled against Joe Biden in election polls so far (Xinhua News Agency/PA Images)

He said: "They're using Covid to defraud the American people.

"The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election. We're going to win."

It comes just 24 hours after the President tweeted that the mail drop boxes are a ‘voter-security disaster’ and are ‘not Covid sanitized’ - a claim which is also unfounded.

Twitter then hid the tweet as they deemed it to have violated their rules around ‘civic and election integrity’.

The social media platform then added: "We placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our Civic Integrity Policy for making misleading health claims that could potentially dissuade people from participation in voting."

Trump also insisted the Democrats are using the Covid-19 pandemic to ‘steal the election’ away from his party.

The US has been the worst-hit country since the pandemic began, with nearly six million confirmed cases and more than 180,000 deaths.

Democrat candidate Joe Biden is currently leading in the polls just over two months out from election day.

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