Donald Trump addressed the North Carolina Republican party on June 5. He claimed that he deserved more credit for the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines; said that the 2020 election will “go down as the crime of the century"; and praised state legislators for defending election integrity in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The Democrats “used COVID and they used the mail-in ballots to steal an election,” he said. He praised 41 states for addressing election integrity, citing the mass mailing of absentee ballots as inherently wrong.