Blagojevich, a critic of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, assessed the diversity of supporters Trump received in this election cycle and at Sunday’s Madison Square Garden rally, all of whom come from different races and age groups. He also prefaced his assessment of the election by describing himself as “an expert witness” in analyzing elections, citing how he ran in multiple hotly contested races.

“And I believe if this election is run fairly, it’s going to be a 2024 version of 1980, when the country made its choice between Reagan and Carter,” Blagojevich said on the Tucker Carlson Show on X. “By the first or second week of October, it started shifting and going towards Reagan, and ended up winning maybe 49 states or something. That won’t happen now because the demographic in America is different, the ball games, those battleground states. But if I’m right about this, Trump will sweep all of them and might be competitive in states like Virginia maybe or Minnesota even.”

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich foresees a fair election leading to Trump sweeping all battleground states, akin to Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory.pic.twitter.com/Dc19rl9Nfu

— Vigilant News (@VigilantNews) October 31, 2024

The 1980 presidential election saw Reagan beat then-President Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid with almost 500 votes in the Electoral College, with Carter only winning five states and Washington, D.C. In providing his prediction, Blagojevich stated he is “very hopeful” Trump could achieve a similar feat, joking that he was cautiously optimistic, “as Reagan used to say.”

Blagojevich, who was a contestant on the Trump-hosted NBC reality show The Apprentice in 2010, was convicted on corruption charges in 2011 for attempting to extort campaign donations from a children’s hospital, as well as attempting to sell former President Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. Trump commuted his 14-year sentence in February 2020, writing on social media almost eight years earlier that Blagojevich’s sentencing was “outrageous.”

In July, the former president narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which Trump raised his fist after getting up from the ground. Blagojevich contended this moment in the 2024 election “elevated him to a very different place,” adding that Trump is “no longer your typical politician.”

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, a lifelong Democrat, did eight years in federal prison. By the time he got out in 2020, his party had gone completely insane. He’s now all in for Donald Trump.

(0:00) Blagojevich’s Prison Experience
(10:10) The Left’s Anti-Christian… pic.twitter.com/cWi5hZ4gfL

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 30, 2024

Host Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, assessed that Trump is far more popular than Harris and that he would “bet my house” on this assessment. However, he also argued that even if Trump wins all seven swing states, it would not guarantee Trump will become the next president.

Carlson will be joining Trump in Arizona, one of the swing states, for a live one-on-one discussion, with all the funds generated from this event being donated to hurricane relief. Trump will also be visiting New Mexico and Nevada on Thursday for campaign events.

In Virginia, a state that has not been won by a Republican presidential candidate since 2004, polling data released Monday have indicated that Trump is trailing Harris by only 2 percentage points. The former president is set to host a rally in Salem, Virginia, on Saturday afternoon, three days before Election Day.