Arguably, it was the most lively moment of an interview that made a lot of news.
“I have to see. … No, I’m not going to say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t do it the last time either,” President Trump said when he was pressured during his recent interview with the host of ” Fox News Sunday “Chris Wallace on whether he would accept the results of the November presidential election. .
WHAT TRUMP SAID FOX NEWS ABOUT ACCEPTING THE ELECTION RESULTS
The comment went viral, sparking many headlines and stories that theorized what could happen if the president loses the November general election but doesn’t accept the results and acknowledges.
On Sunday, the president turned to Twitter to charge that “the 2020 elections will be totally manipulated if voting by mail is allowed, and everyone knows it.”
Trump has been warning about a “rigged” election for months as he has repeatedly criticized voting by mail. “Because of MAIL TICKETS, 2020 will be the MOST DIFFERENT choice in the history of our nations,” the president said in a tweet last month.
Meanwhile, days before the president’s tweet in June, a group of former military and government officials, political agents and academics virtually came together to participate in a “war game” to try to figure out what might happen in the event of such an election. disputed. The meeting was organized by the nonpartisan Transition Integrity Project.
The scenarios they played included a narrow Electoral College victory by Democratic challenger Joe Biden over the president, and no clear winner on Election Night. Participants played the roles of Biden and Trump campaign leaders, Democratic and Republican elected officials, the media, and other key players, to see what would happen in such circumstances.
“All of our scenarios ended in street violence and political stalemate,” Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown law professor and a former Defense Department official who co-organized the Transition Integrity Project, told the Boston Globe, which reported on the exercise. “The law is essentially … it’s almost helpless against a president who is willing to ignore it.”
THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHARGES DEMOCRATS HAVE AN “ELECTORAL HISTORY”
But Brooks, speaking to Fox News, cautioned: “Scenario exercises do not predict the future. They explore possible futures: some of the “what if”. Our scenario exercises did not end in good places, but it is important to note that this did no It means there is something inevitable about the chaos and the constitutional crisis in the coming months, only these particular exercises suggest they are real. possibilities“
And he emphasized: “The objective of the exercises was not to give people nightmares, but to identify possible turning points for prevent or mitigate catastrophic results for the 2020 presidential elections. … I think the exercises led to some important ideas, one of which is forewarned; In all of our exercises, events unfolded very quickly in the days following the elections, and those who had thought ahead of time about ‘what if’ were better positioned to respond than those who did not. ”
The Transition Integrity Project is currently preparing a report based on its different “war games” scenarios that were played last month.
In response to the president’s comments in his “Fox News Sunday” interview, the Biden campaign said: “The American people will decide these elections. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting intruders outside the House Blanca “.
Some conservative commentators dismissed coverage of the president’s comments as hysteria.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy called the premise “junk” in a National Review op-ed piece titled “Hysterical ‘Trump Won’t Go’ Canard.”
“There is no rational reason to consent to the anti-Trump hallucination of a defeated president locked in the Oval Office who refuses to leave. If a president ever tried something so absurd after the divestment of the constitutionally mandated executive authority, he or she would be escorted off-site, hopefully, with the dignity that could still be mustered under the circumstances, “McCarthy wrote.
