Trump claims US elections are ‘third world’ despite sweeping Super Tuesday primaries

The Republican frontrunner told supporters ‘we won’t have a country’ if he loses the November election

Donald Trump declared victory on stage at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida on Super Tuesday after he had been projected the Republican primary election winner in a sweep of 11 states.

In a rambling 20-minute address loaded with false claims and familiar grievances, the frontrunner for the Republican party’s nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s general election called US elections “third-world” – while simultaneously celebrating his own primary wins.

“In some ways we’re a third-world country,” he said. “We’re a third-world country at our borders and we’re a third-world country at our elections. And we have to stop that.”

The former president has maintained a false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” and “rigged” against him, and his inflated claims – spanning more than a decade – have animated spurious legal challenges and Republican-led attempts to challenge results and craft legislation to do what Mr Trump failed to do in the courts.

Mr Trump has won almost every 2024 Republican primary election thus far, with Nikki Haley – his chief and sole rival left in the race – winning primaries in Vermont and Washington DC.

“November 5 is going to go down as the single most important day in the history of our country,” Mr Trump told his supporters on Tuesday night, before the race in Vermont was called.

“We’re going to win this election because we have no choice. If we lose this election we won’t have a country anymore.”

Mr Trump didn’t mention Ms Haley in his remarks, but he predicted imminent “unity” within the Republican Party, “and it’s going to happen very quickly,” he said.

His relatively brief victory speech veered across familiar targets and warned the country was “dying” as he promoted anti-immigrant rhetoric that falsely claimed migrants from the US-Mexico border are invading US cities with “migrant crime”.

Donald Trump greets supporters at his Mar-a-Lago property on 5 March (Getty Images)

“We’re gonna have to deport a lot of people. A lot of bad people,” he said. “Because our country can’t live like this. Our cities are choking to death. Our states our dying. And frankly our country is dying.”

Mr Trump, who has also repeatedly villainized journalists and publishers as the “enemy of the people” and suggested they could be criminally prosecuted, lamented what he called the end of the “fair and free press”.

“The press has not been fair nor has it been free,” he said. “The press used … to police our country. Now nobody has confidence in them.”

The twice-impeached former president – who faces 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions and a potentially financially crushing fraud judgement in New York – counted primary victories in nearly a dozen states by the time he took the stage on Tuesday.

Among his victories was Texas, where a massive 161 delegates were at stake to firm up his Republican Party nomination.

“They call it ‘Super Tuesday’ for a reason,” Mr Trump said. “This is a big one. They tell me, the pundits and otherwise, that there’s never been one like this. There’s never been anything so conclusive.”