To Close His Dallas Convention, Trump Led the Crowd in a Loyalty Oath to Himself — Calling Himself "the Greatest President in the History of the United States" and Telling Anyone Who Doesn't Vote They'll "Go to Hell" — and, in the Same Breath as His Yearlong Crusade Against Imaginary Democratic "Fraud," Urged His Own Supporters to "Cheat Like Hell": "I Don't Care If I'm Registered or Not"
On September 10, 2026, closing the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump led the crowd in an extended "pledge" to vote — and told them to cheat. In the oath he directed the room to repeat, he said: "I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do. There's never been bigger cheaters." He told those who fail to vote that they would "go to hell," and described himself, mid-oath, as "the greatest president in the history of the United States." The moment is remarkable on two fronts. First, it is a sitting president openly urging his supporters to cheat in an election — even framed as bravado, an extraordinary thing for the head of state to say — and it detonates his own justification for a yearlong assault on voting access. Across this archive, Trump has restricted mail ballots, pushed a national voter database, and built a "citizenship verification" apparatus, all in the name of stopping Democratic "fraud" he has never substantiated. Here he tells his own crowd to "cheat like hell," which exposes the fraud rhetoric as projection and pretext: the cheating he warns about is the cheating he is now endorsing, for his side. Second, the "pledge" was to him personally — a loyalty oath to a man who called himself the greatest president in history and consigned non-voters to hell. A get-out-the-vote drive turned into a cult liturgy with a confession of intent to cheat built in.