‘Literally off his rocker’: Why Trump is fixated on Indiana
INDIANAPOLIS — Donald Trump has spent much of the past week fixated, of all places, on Indiana, accusing elections officials here of conspiring against him to help his rival, Nikki Haley, in a Republican presidential primary that won’t take place until May.
The complaints are baseless, elections officials say.
Worse, they and Trump’s opponents warn, with the former president raising alarms even in a state like deep-red Indiana, they look like a test run by Trump and his allies to undermine confidence in the election in November.
“Trump is reinforcing a narrative where the only acceptable outcome is his victory, thus preemptively delegitimizing any electoral defeat,” said Joshua Claybourn, a Republican attorney from Evansville and former GOP delegate from the state. “It sets the stage for yet another crisis of legitimacy in the November general election.”
But Trump’s Indiana intel seems to be coming from one of his most loyal congressional allies: Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, who is running for Senate, and who initially shared Trump’s Truth Social post about Indiana last week on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The actual crux of the issue is pretty straightforward. For days, Trump has been suggesting that Haley failed to qualify for the Indiana primary ballot, saying she was “scrambling in Indiana with democrat county clerk offices to ‘verify’ signatures” after the fact, or even that she had “forgot to apply.” He has gone so far as to have his campaign’s attorney threaten litigation to challenge Haley’s ballot status.
But Trump’s allegation is based on a distortion of Indiana law. While signatures to get ballot access were due by Jan. 30, the filing deadline isn’t until this Friday, meaning that Haley is still on track to qualify for the state’s ballot.
Even the longtime Republican voter registration board member at the center of the dispute told POLITICO in an interview that Trump appeared to have false information and that the process is designed to prevent the kind of conspiracy the former president is alleging.
“I think somebody gave him incorrect information based on lack of knowledge, and he went with what he was told,” said Cindy Mowery, the Republican board member on the Marion........
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