President Donald Trump declined on Sunday to say he would accept the results of the 2020 election, adding that “it will have to do” and stated without evidence that voting by mail “will manipulate the election.”
Trump’s comments came during a lengthy interview with “Fox News Sunday” presenter Chris Wallace, in which he criticized the so-called cancellation culture and repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus, which has infected more than 3.7 million people. in the US And killed at least 140,131, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
During the interview, Wallace presented the results of the latest national Fox News poll, which showed that Democratic candidate for President Joe Biden led Trump by 8%. The poll showed that Biden also leads on specific issues, including a 1% advantage over Trump in the economy.
When presented with the results, Trump downplayed the findings as “bogus polls.”
“First of all, I am not losing because those are false surveys,” he said. “They were false in 2016 and now they are even more false.”
Later in the interview, when Wallace asked if Trump is a “lovable” loser, the president replied that “it depends” and repeated claims he had made in the past that voting by mail could lead to widespread electoral fraud.
With the coronavirus rapidly spreading across large swaths of the U.S., some states have made efforts to more easily accommodate voting by mail to reduce the risk of infection at in-person polling places in November. Trump has previously attacked efforts by officials in Michigan and Nevada to expand access to vote by mail, repeatedly saying that they will lead to electoral fraud, although he has presented no evidence to back up that claim.
“I think voting by mail is going to manipulate the elections,” he said in Sunday’s interview. “I really do.”
Wallace lobbied Trump about whether to accept the results of the 2020 election, but Trump declined to answer the question directly.
“I have to see. Look, you, I have to see,” he said. “No, I’m not going to say yes. I’m not going to say no.”
Earlier in the interview, Trump played down the coronavirus pandemic, attributing the recent spike in cases to increased evidence and saying that many infected people “automatically” recover from the virus. Health officials have repeatedly noted that the new cases have outgrown increased testing, indicating that the virus is spreading rapidly in communities across the country.
When Wallace pointed to the European Union, which he says reports about 6,000 new cases a day, Trump said it was because they “didn’t test” and he refused to acknowledge the differences in political responses between Europe and the United States.
The U.S. has reported an average of 66,498 new coronavirus cases per day for the past seven days, an increase of more than 15% compared to a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of Hopkins data. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have reported growth in cases of at least 5%, on average over the past week. And Covid-19 deaths, which delay case diagnosis, have begun to rise nationwide, fueled by multiple states with expanding outbreaks.
“No country has done what we have done in terms of testing. We are the envy of the world,” Trump said. “If you look at other countries, they don’t even do tests. They do tests if someone enters the hospital.”
When asked about his relationship with White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the country’s leading infectious disease experts, Trump said he spoke to him on Saturday, but added that “it’s a bit alarmist”. Trump also said he disagrees with Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said earlier this week that if everyone wore a mask, the United States could control the virus in one or two months.
The president continued to promote the strength of the economy before the virus reached the United States in January, adding that Democratic officials “deliberately” hold the economy shutdown to harm his reelection effort. Many states have implemented costly public health measures to curb the spread of the virus, such as closing bars and other businesses, closing schools, and banning large gatherings. Trump specifically lamented the inability of his campaign to organize protests in Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada.
“Democrats are purposely keeping their schools closed, their states closed,” he said. “We are not allowed to have demonstrations in these states led by Democrats.”
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