- President Trump declined to pledge to accept the results of the 2020 election and ensure a peaceful transition of power in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, broadcast Sunday.
- In the interview, Trump repeated his frequent false claim that mail ballots are inherently “rigged” and said “he is not a good loser.”
- “I have to see, look, I have to see, I’m not just going to say yes, I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t do it the last time either,” Trump said when Wallace asked directly if he would accept the election results.
- “The American people will decide these elections. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting intruders outside the White House,” a Biden campaign spokesman said in response.
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President Donald Trump declined to pledge to accept the results of the 2020 election and ensure a peaceful transition of power in an interview with “Fox News Sunday” presenter Chris Wallace.
In the interview, broadcast Sunday, Trump undermined confidence in the outcome of the 2020 election by falsely claiming that mail ballots are “rigged” and opened the door to later challenge the results if he loses to Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
“Overall, not to mention November, are you a good loser?” Wallace asked.
“I’m not a good loser, I don’t like to lose, I don’t lose too often,” Trump replied.
“But are you kind?” Wallace pressed.
“You don’t know until you see it, I think it depends. I think voting by mail is going to manipulate the election,” Trump said. “I really do.”
“But do you suggest not accepting the election results?” Wallace continued.
“I have to see,” said Trump. Wallace reminded Trump that he asked a similar question about whether he would admit to the election if he lost in a presidential debate on October 19, 2016. At the time, Trump told Wallace that “he would tell you at the time” and “you would keep in suspense. ”
Wallace then asked, “Can you give a direct answer, will you accept the election?”
“I have to see, look, I have to see, I’m not just going to say yes, I’m not going to say no, and not the last time,” Trump replied.
—Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) July 19, 2020
“The American people will decide these elections. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting intruders outside the White House,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told the Washington Post in response to the comments. Trump.
The most recent poll of the 2020 elections has shown Trump far behind Biden both domestically and in key key states, as voters continue to give Trump poor marks in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, relations racial and a number of other important issues.
As states have moved in recent months to expand absentee and mail voting, Trump, who voted by mail himself in Florida earlier this year, has attacked mail voting as inherently fraudulent and unreliable. .
He falsely claimed that an expansion of absentee and mail ballots will lead to massive fraud and corruption (absentee ballot fraud rates are very low), that expanding mail voting hurts Republicans (studies show that it confers no partisan advantage on either side), and they even raised an unfounded conspiracy that California children would be stealing ballots from mailboxes and falsifying them.
Both Trump and Attorney General William Barr have also put forward a theory, for which there is no evidence to support, that foreign adversaries will try to interfere in the 2020 election by making and sending “counterfeit ballots” to voters.
While voter fraud cases occur with absentee ballots and by mail, they are extremely rare. According to the Heritage Foundation’s conservative database of voter and electoral fraud cases, there have been 1,100 criminal convictions for all electoral fraud and fewer than 150 criminal convictions for fraudulent use of absentee ballots in the past 20 years.
And despite Trump winning the 2016 election, he went on to claim for months that millions of undocumented immigrants had voted incorrectly in those elections and that they were in part responsible for the 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote. As of today, no evidence has emerged to demonstrate that there was widespread electoral fraud in 2016.
“For five years, Trump has tried to undermine our elections over and over again, from asking for foreign interference to making unfounded claims about electoral fraud and lying about the results of the 2016 election,” Sean Eldridge, chairman of the progressive democratic reform group base. Stand Up America told Insider in a statement. “Today’s comments are an escalation in these attacks on our democracy and show the insidious ways in which Trump is working to cast doubt on the outcome of these elections before the votes are cast.”
