Former President Donald Trump highlighted the election in New York City on Wednesday as another example of faulty American elections, calling for additional security reforms.
“Check out the New York election today, by the way, they just realized it’s a disaster,” Trump said. “They’re unable to count the votes.”
Trump spoke about the elections during a visit to the Southern border with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and members of law enforcement.
He pointed to the New York Board of Elections admitting they mistakenly included 135,000 “test” ballots in the final tally.
Trump described the test ballots in New York as “make-believe” votes and questioned the integrity of elections across the country.
“We better get our elections straightened out because you’re going to have a runaway country. You’re going to have a banana republic; you’re going to have a third world country here pretty soon,” he said. “Because our elections are a mess.”
Trump said that secure elections and strong borders are essential to the future of the United States.
“We have a sick country in many ways. It’s sick in elections and sick in the border,” Trump said. “If you don’t have good elections and you don’t have a strong border, you don’t have a country.”
The former president previously linked the two issues during a political rally in Ohio on Saturday.
“You have the crime of the century, which I consider to be the election of 2020,” he said to supporters, adding, “You look at all the people that are dying on the border, you look at all of the bad things that are happening to our country, I consider it to be the crime of the century.”
