Trump calls Jocelyn Benson ‘a thief’ and tells Michigan to ‘watch all of those Detroit votes’

Nine days before the election, Donald Trump is already telling Michigan where the cheating will be: “watch all of those Detroit votes.”

The target was Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state and the Democratic nominee for governor. “As Secretary of State in 2020, she was one of the worst for cheating,” Trump said, adding: “She cheated more, in my opinion, than anybody else, any other politician, in the entire United States.” Then: “she shouldn’t even be allowed to run,” and “she’s a thief.”

The 2020 receipts are already in. In 2021, the Michigan Senate’s Republican-led Oversight Committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in the state’s 2020 election. Trump also said Benson “unleashed millions of mail-in ballot applications,” to “every registered voter, legal and illegal, living and dead.” The applications did go out, and in 2020 the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled she had acted lawfully in mailing them to registered voters. The “illegal” voters are his. The “dead” ones are mostly his too: the same Senate report found some applications went to the long-dead on old lists, but of 200-plus Wayne County names flagged as dead voters, it found two who appeared to have voted.

His forecast for Detroit covers both outcomes: he thinks Michigan will “get a lot of them,” but wants to “make sure they count.” If Detroit votes his way, they count. If it doesn’t, he’s already said what to watch.