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

Donald Trump declared victory from a stage at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida after projected Republican primary election victories in 11 states in a sweep of Super Tuesday states.

In a rambling 20-minute address loaded with false claims and familiar grievances, the frontrunner for the GOP’s nominee to face Democratic president Joe Biden in November’s general election called US elections “third-world”.

“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 every 2024 Republican primary election thus far, with his chief GOP rival Nikki Haley 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. “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”.

“We’