Trump records video encouraging Republicans to vote early

Former President Trump recorded a video released Wednesday encouraging Republicans to vote early, coming one week after he offered muddled messaging over the strategy.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) launched a “Bank Your Vote” campaign last month to encourage Republicans to vote early. The initiative aims to educate GOP voters on absentee voting, ballot collection and in-person early voting.

Trump offered his strongest support yet for early voting in a roughly 40-second video shared by the RNC.

“The RNC is leading the fight to help secure your vote in 2024 as well. They’re fighting bad Democrat laws, putting folks on the ground to serve as poll workers and poll watchers and engaging attorneys to monitor every step of the voting process,” Trump said.

“We must defeat the far left at their own game, or our country will never recover from this disastrous crooked Biden administration. Sign up at bankyourvote.com now and join the Republican effort to win big in 2024. We’re going to win, and we’re going to make America great again,” he added.

Last week, Trump offered mixed messaging on early voting during a town hall interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. While the former president said he would encourage early voting, he also cast doubt on the process, alleging people create “phony ballots” and ballots can get lost.

Unsupported claims about fraud in early and absentee voting have been a key theme in Trump’s ongoing and erroneous claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

But Republicans are increasingly turning to early voting as they look to close the gap against Democrats in competitive races, especially after a disappointing 2022 election cycle in which the party failed to take back control of the Senate and won only a narrow majority in the House.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and a handful of groups have joined forces in the state to launch a separate initiative aimed at encouraging early voting ahead of the state’s Legislature races this fall.