Former President Donald Trump has been warned by Fox News host Sean Hannity that he could be on the verge of making a "big mistake" in the 2024 presidential election.
Hannity hosted a town hall-style Fox News event featuring Trump on Tuesday. The ex-president was asked whether he would ask his supporters to vote "based on the system we have." Hannity urged Trump to encourage Republican voters to take advantage of early voting and voting by mail, saying, "I think if you don't, it's a big mistake."
Trump, who continues to falsely claim that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by President Joe Biden, responded by saying that he would encourage his supporters to take advantage of all voting methods, while also baselessly suggesting that mail-in ballots from those who voted for him would mysteriously "get lost."
"No, no, no," Trump told Hannity. "I will [encourage mail-in voting]. But those ballots get lost also, Sean. You know, they send them in and all of a sudden, they're gone. Those ballots get lost also."
"The answer is, I will, because you like it," he continued. "But you know what? Can I be honest? A lot of bad things happen to those ballots also. They're sent in early and all of a sudden, where are they?"
Newsweek reached out for comment to the office of Trump via email on Tuesday.
Trump's comments came after Hannity had lamented that Republicans were "reluctant and resistant" toward early voting, mail-in voting and so-called "ballot harvesting." The former president initially avoided the issue and instead launched into an evidence-free conspiracy theory about Democrats creating "phony ballots."
"The one thing a lot of people, including you, don't talk about: They also create phony ballots," Trump said, prompting cheers from the crowd. "And that's a real problem. That's my opinion. But they create a lot of phony ballots."
Hannity seemingly ignored the theory while continuing to warn that Republicans would find it "nearly impossible to catch up with" hundreds of thousands of early ballots on Election Day if they did not encourage early voting.
Trump, who repeatedly bashed mail-in voting prior to the 2020 election despite using the method to cast ballots himself, said that he thought it was "great" that Republicans "for some reason" wanted elections conducted in person and only on a single day.
The former president went on to accuse Democrats of trying to "cheat" by not supporting in-person voting "with voter ID." He then returned his focus to the supposed "phony ballots," calling it "the one thing we have to be very careful on."
Trump offered no evidence to support the ballots claim but suggested that it was true because it was his "opinion" and "the opinion of a lot of people."
