Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday accused former President Trump of “laying the groundwork for election denial” after Trump falsely claimed that a photo of a crowd at a vice presidential campaign rally Harris in Detroit was tampered with artificial intelligence (AI technology).
“Donald Trump may be crazy, but he is not stupid. When he claims that “no one” showed up at a 10,000-person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered in the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all the time, there is a method to his madness ,” Sanders warned in a statement.
“Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork to reject the election results if he loses,” he said. “If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally don’t exist, it won’t be difficult to convince them that the election results in Pennsylvania, Michigan and elsewhere are ‘false’ and ‘fraudulent.’”
“This is what undermining democracy is all about. That’s what fascism is about,” Sanders added. “That’s why we must do everything we can to see that Trump is defeated.”
An estimated 15,000 people attended a rally for Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), her running mate, at a Detroit airport last week.
Trump, however, wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, that “She did this and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of supposed followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
Trump insisted that “there was no one there,” although journalists covering the event later confirmed that thousands of people attended and pointed to substantial photographic and video evidence to corroborate that the event was well attended.
“Look, we got her with a fake ‘mob,’” Trump falsely declared.
Harris’s campaign reported strong turnout of supporters at other campaign events, such as the 12,000 people who welcomed her at events in Philadelphia and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the 15,000 people who attended an event in Glendale, Arizona.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
