Trump Had a Dallas Crowd Repeat a Pledge to Him — Including a Promise to "Cheat Like Hell"

"Please raise your right hand," Trump told the crowd. Thousands of them did — inside the American Airlines Center in Dallas, closing out the Republican Party's first-ever midterm convention. Then he had them repeat his words back to him, line by line.

The GOP held its midterm convention — informally nicknamed "Trumpapalooza" by some attendees — in Dallas on September 9 and 10, 2026, roughly 20,000 people strong. Vice President JD Vance delivered the keynote on night two. Trump closed the show.

According to multiple news organizations that covered the remarks live, Trump asked the crowd to raise their right hands and recite a pledge after him. The wording, as transcribed by outlets including Fox News and Raw Story, ran roughly like this: "I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can't even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends. I will do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not — I'm going to try to cheat like hell like they do. There's never been bigger cheaters, and I don't care. I am going to go out, and we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that."

Separately, discussing the stakes of the election, Trump told the crowd: "You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell." The crowd, according to Raw Story's account, responded to the pledge by chanting "U.S.A."

Exact transcriptions vary slightly between outlets — this was a live, call-and-response moment, not a prepared text — but the substance is consistent across every account IF Daily reviewed: a pledge of personal loyalty to Trump, built around a promise to vote, that included the line "cheat like hell like they do."

Trump has repeatedly and without evidence accused Democrats of cheating in elections, a claim that has been consistently rejected by election officials, courts, and his own administration's cybersecurity agency in prior cycles. "Cheat like hell like they do" is best read inside that framing — Trump casting the pledge as matching an alleged (and unsubstantiated) opposing tactic, not issuing a literal instruction to commit voter fraud. Nothing in the reporting IF Daily reviewed indicates Trump specified any concrete illegal act, or that the crowd was asked to do anything beyond show up and vote.

That said, the loyalty-pledge framing itself is real and not an exaggeration: the pledge opened by having supporters describe Trump as "the greatest president in the history of the United States" and pledge personal devotion to him, ahead of any mention of the Republican Party or specific candidates.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the moment, saying Trump had replaced "the Pledge of Allegiance with a pledge of allegiance to himself." Clips of the pledge circulated widely online — one post by the journalism account Acyn drew more than a million views, with another repost passing 100,000.

This did happen, at this event, on this date. CNN's own video desk covered and published the moment; NPR, Fox News, The Hill, ABC News, and Raw Story each separately reported it with matching substance. The viral social clips are not the only source — they match what credentialed news organizations covering the convention on-site reported.

The midterms are November 3, 2026. Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress by narrow margins, and this convention — the first midterm-specific convention either party has held — was built around turning out the base to protect that majority. Whatever the pledge meant rhetorically, its practical purpose was the same as everything else on that stage: get supporters to show up and vote.