Trump Says He Doesn’t Need Votes Again—With a Weird New Twist

Donald Trump apparently doesn’t care whether or not he wins in November anymore.

At a Fox News town hall on Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee revealed that his 2024 campaign strategy excludes anyone who he doesn’t believe supported him in the last election cycles.

Responding to a question from Sean Hannity about the economy, Trump spun a thread about a would-be supporter in the Republican primary who hadn’t voted for him before.

“One person who didn’t support me—he said, ‘I must admit I had the most successful four years of my life but I’m gonna vote for some—’ and now that person came back to me. I don’t want that person,” Trump said to muffled applause. “I don’t want that person.

“You know, they say you should take everybody, but that’s not the way I’m built. It’s one of those little problems,” he added.

"They say you should take everybody, but that's not the way I'm built" --Trump says he doesn't want voters who didn't support him in 2020 pic.twitter.com/xtIX7omoao

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 6, 2024

It’s not the first time Trump has attempted to wash his hands of the labor required to win a fair election. Speaking in Detroit in June, Trump said of his campaign, “We don’t need [the] votes,” and “We got more votes than anybody’s ever had.” Instead, he argued that the campaign needed to “guard the vote” in anticipation of a “steal.”

Failing to draw more voters to his cause would, frankly, prove to be a huge problem for Trump, who finally admitted earlier this week that he actually did lose the 2020 election. The former president lost to President Joe Biden by more than seven million votes.

Neglecting to court those voters would surely spell disaster for his chances in November, especially during a fresher election season that has drawn renewed energy since Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the Democratic ticket—though Trump may not understand the depth of the problem. While Trump’s support levels have held steady, Harris’s have slowly grown, indicating that she is picking up crucial undecided voters.

Later in the town hall, Trump made an outlandishly hyperbolic statement about his support around the country while discussing the September 10 debate on ABC News, arguing that the network better “be fair” to him or else it would alienate “75, 80 percent of the country.”