Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump boast­ed to sup­port­ers on Tues­day about his cam­paign inten­tion­al­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ing itself in order to skirt coro­n­avirus restric­tions. “Joe Biden and his par­ty spent the entire sum­mer cheer­ing on the riots, ram­pag­ing for Demo­c­rat-run cities, label­ing them as peace­ful pro­test­ers. We call you peace­ful pro­test­ers, you know why? Because they have rules in these Demo­c­rat-run states that if you’re cam­paign­ing, you can­not have more than five peo­ple. They did that for me,” the pres­i­dent told sup­port­ers dur­ing a cam­paign ral­ly in Win­ston-Salem, North Carolina.The Com­man­der in Chief has railed against lock­down restric­tions meant to slow the spread of COVID-19, which has infect­ed more than 6 mil­lion Amer­i­cans and killed near­ly 190,000, accord­ing to Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. > Trump: “We call you peace­ful pro­test­ers. You know why? Because they have rules in these Demo­c­rat-run states that if you cam­paign you can’t have more than 5 peo­ple. They did that for me.” pic.twitter.com/Nr7JBL6re4> > — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) Sep­tem­ber 8, 2020“If you’re going to church—you can’t go to church any more! You can’t go to church, you’ve got to stay in your house, you can’t do any­thing, but if you’re will­ing to riot, run­ning down main street, stand on each oth­ers’ faces, do what­ev­er the hell you want to do, you’re allowed to do that because you’re con­sid­ered a peace­ful pro­test­er, so we decid­ed to call all our ral­lies peace­ful protests,” he said Tues­day night. To which munic­i­pal agency the cam­paign would have issued such descrip­tions of itself is unclear. In keep­ing with his tra­di­tion of attack­ing the health guide­lines issued by his own admin­is­tra­tion, Trump also claimed states that opt­ed not to shut down to stop the virus’ spread fared bet­ter. “You are in a shut­down. I’ve been to many states that aren’t in shut­downs, and they are doing bet­ter. They’re doing bet­ter,” he said.States’ respons­es to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic have var­ied wide­ly, as have the results of their respons­es. Texas and Flori­da, which have large­ly rescind­ed their COVID-19 shut­down orders, are still grap­pling with high case counts. Cal­i­for­nia, which insti­tut­ed a strict and ear­ly lock­down, is home to the high­est num­ber of cas­es in the nation. Iowa, which did not issue a statewide stay-at-home order, is now one of the country’s COVID-19 hot spots. Mul­ti­ple peer-reviewed stud­ies have, how­ev­er, found that lock­downs pre­vent­ed mil­lions of infec­tions. Trump’s cam­paign trav­el has result­ed in dozens of new coro­n­avirus infec­tions among his own staff and his Secret Ser­vice guards. Trump also stoked con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, Roy Coop­er, and his admin­is­tra­tion. The pres­i­dent, a Repub­li­can, encour­aged sup­port­ers to out for the “thiev­ing, steal­ing, and rob­bing they do,” urg­ing his sup­port­ers to be “poll ers.”“You have to be care­ful with those bal­lots. Watch those bal­lots. I don’t like it. You have a Demo­c­rat gov­er­nor. You have all these Democ­rats. I don’t like it,” he said.Trump has spent months attempt­ing to under­mine the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the upcom­ing elec­tion results, whether attack­ing the Postal Ser­vice and vot­ing by mail or vot­ing con­duct­ed in states with Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors. He has repeat­ed­ly said out­side forces “rigged” the 2016 elec­tion with­out evi­dence, despite win­ning. Read more at The Dai­ly Beast.Get our top sto­ries in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Mem­ber­ship: Beast Inside goes deep­er on the sto­ries that mat­ter to you. Learn more.