Trump says 2020 presidential election will be 'rigged by foreign countries' as he slumps further in polls

US president continues attack on election confidence as he slides in polls

Donald Trump has said the 2020 presidential election will be the “SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES” in an angry tweet as polls show his popularity fall against Democratic rival Joe Biden.

The US president wrote on Monday that “foreign countries and others” would print mail-in ballots to disrupt November’s election.

“RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS,” he tweeted. “IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”

Those comments come less than a week after Fox News’ latest poll showed Mr Biden’s lead over the US president had widened to 12 percentage points.

The poll, which was carried out between 13-16 June and published on Thursday, showed president Trump trailing Mr Biden by the widest margin to date.

Some 50 per cent would support the Democrat at November’s presidential election, compared to 38 per cent who planned on voting Republican.

The president, whose campaign event in Tulsa on Saturday was mocked after thousands stayed at home, shared another tweet on Monday morning which claimed “Mail-in Ballots ‘Absolutely Opens the Floodgates to Fraud‘“.

That post shared a Breitbart News article in which Attorney General William Barr denounced mass mail-in voting as fraud.

Mr Barr, who made those comments on Fox News on Sunday, had said that mail ballots “could undercut the confidence in the integrity of our elections”.

“A foreign country could print up tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots,” argued Mr Barr. “[It would] be very hard for us to detect which was the right and which was the wrong ballot. So, I think it can — it can upset and undercut the confidence in the integrity of our elections. If anything, we should tighten them up right now.”

“This will be the Election disaster of our time. Mail-In Ballots will lead to a RIGGED ELECTION", added president Trump on Twitter.

The president later wrote that his opponents planned to cheat with mail-in ballots amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!", tweeted Mr Trump.

He admitted in March that Republicans should stop mail-in ballots being introduced because “for whatever reason, [it] doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

Mr Trump’s latest tweet about the 2020 election comes less than 24 hours before John Bolton’s tell-all book is released.

Excerpts seen last week included claims that the US president had tried to solicit Chinese assistance with his 2020 re-election bid.

The ex-national security advisor also wrote that he was “hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations”.