Trump Warns ‘COVID Tyrants’ Are Eyeing Lockdowns to Interfere with 2024 Election

Former president Donald Trump warned on Wednesday that “left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates ” to allegedly interfere with the 2024 presidential election.

“The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear-mongering about the new variants that are coming. Gee-whiz, you know what else is coming? An election,” the 2024 presidential candidate claimed in a video posted to X.

“They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election. Does that sound familiar?” he alleged

The 45th president of the United States added that “These are bad people, these are sick people we’re dealing with.”

“But to every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words: we will not comply. So don’t even think about it,” he continued. “We will not shut down our schools. We will not except your lockdowns. We will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.”

Trump further claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and that his opposition is “trying to do the same thing all over again by rigging the most important election in the history of our country — the 2024 election — even if it means trying to bring back COVID.”

“But they will fail because we will not let it happen,” he said, also promising to “use every available authority” if he is reelected to cut federal funding to any school, college, airline, or public transportation system that imposes a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate. 

Trump’s comments come as schools, companies, and hospitals around the country have, once again, imposed mask mandates to purportedly handle the emergence of the EG.5 and BA 2.86 COVID-19 variants. The World Health Organization notably classified the former as a “variant of interest” in early August, although it said the risk to global public health is low. COVID hospitalizations have also ticked up, although they are “still at historic lows.”

President Joe Biden also said last week that he plans to request more money from Congress to develop a fresh coronavirus vaccine, adding he may require everyone to take it whether they have been previously vaccinated or not. 

Noticing these pandemic-era trends, social media users and some conservatives in the media space have been speculating that Democrats and health leaders are looking to bring back mandates and lockdowns. 

Fact checkers have been quick to jump on the claims, calling them “unsupported.”

“These rumors are utterly false,” Nick Spinelli, a CDC spokesperson, told the left-leaning FactCheck.org.

Lockdowns during the pandemic were largely considered a failure, and were detrimental to Americans’ overall wellbeing. A peer-reviewed study published this year by the Institute for Economic Affairs from researchers, including economics Professor Steve H. Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, found that lockdowns had a “negligible” impact on deaths compared to the “staggering collateral costs.”

Some of those costs include irretrievable learning losses, drug abuse, alcoholism, more suicides, and increased isolation. Ninety-percent of small businesses reported “devastating impacts” from government shutdowns. Many Americans were unable to go to church, while liquor stores remained open. Others postponed weddings, were unable to attend funerals, or were barred from seeing dying loved ones.