President Donald Trump is refusing to publicly commit to accepting the results of the upcoming White House election, recalling a similar threat he made weeks before the 2016 vote, as he scoffs at polls showing him lagging behind Democrat Joe Biden. Trump says it’s too early to make such an ironclad guarantee.
“I have to see. Look … I have to see,” Trump told moderator Chris Wallace during a wide-ranging interview on ”Fox News Sunday.” “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” The Biden campaign responded: “The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”
Trump also hammered the Pentagon brass for favoring renaming bases that honor Confederate military leaders — a drive for change spurred by the national debate about race after George Floyd’s death. “I don’t care what the military says,” the commander in chief said.
The president described the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as a “a little bit of an alarmist” about the coronavirus pandemic, and Trump stuck to what he had said back in February — that the virus is “going to disappear.” On Fox, he said, “I’ll be right eventually.” The United States tops the global death toll list with over 140,000 and confirmed infections, with 3.7 million.
It is remarkable that a sitting president would express less than complete confidence in the American democracy’s electoral process. But for Trump, it comes from his insurgent playbook of four years ago, when in the closing stages of his race against Hillary Clinton, he said he would not commit to honoring the election results if the Democrat won.
Pressed during an October 2016 debate about whether he would abide by the voters’ will, Trump responded that he would “keep you in suspense.” The president’s remarks to Fox are certain to fuel conversation on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers had already been airing concerns in private about a scenario in which Trump disputes the election results.
Trump has seen his presidential popularity erode over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and in the aftermath of nationwide protests centered on racial injustice that erupted after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis nearly two months.
Trump contends that a series of polls that show his popularity eroding and Biden holding an advantage are faulty. He believes Republican voters are underrepresented in such surveys.
“First of all, I’m not losing, because those are fake polls,” Trump said in the taped interview, which aired Sunday. “They were fake in 2016 and now they’re even more fake. The polls were much worse in 2016.”
Trump was frequently combative with Wallace in defending his administration’s response to the pandemic, weighing in on the Black Lives Matter movement and trying to portray Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as lacking the mental prowess to serve as president.
Among the issues discussed was the push for wholesale changes in policing that has swept across the nation. Trump said he could understand why Black Americans are upset about how police use force disproportionately against them.
“Of course I do. Of course I do,” the president said, adding his usual refrain that “whites are also killed, too.”
He said he was “not offended either by Black Lives Matter,” but at the same time defended the Confederate flag, a symbol of the racism of the past, and said those who “proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism.”
“They love their flag, it represents the South, they like the South. That’s freedom of speech. And you know, the whole thing with ‘cancel culture,’ we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the North and the South fought. We have to remember that, otherwise we’ll end up fighting again. You can’t just cancel all,” Trump said.
Wallace challenged Trump on some of his claims and called out the president at time, such as when Trump falsely asserted that “Biden wants to defund the police.” The former vice president has not joined with activists rallying behind that banner. He has proposed more money for police, conditioned to improvements in their practices.
Trump continues to insist that Biden “signed a charter” with one of his primary rivals on the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. At one point in the interview, Trump calls on aides to bring him documentation to support his assertion. Trump, however, is unable to point to language from a Biden-Sanders task force policy document released this month by the Biden campaign.
Trump stood behind his pledge to veto a $740 billion defense bill over a requirement that the Defense Department change the names of bases named for Confederate military leaders. That list includes Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Benning in Georgia.
The president argued there were no viable alternatives if the government ever tried. “We’re going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton?” Trump asked, referring to a prominent civil rights leader. “What are you going to name it?”
Trump, 74, stuck to a campaign charge that Biden, 77, is unable to handle the rigors of the White House because of his age. As for polls showing the incumbent is trailing, Trump noted he was thought to be behind for much of the 2016 contest. “I won’t lose,” he predicted.
The president and top advisors have long accused Biden of using the pandemic as an excuse to stay in “his basement” in his Delaware home. Biden has indeed shifted much of his campaign online, but frequently travels in Delaware and Pennsylvania, organizing speeches and small gatherings with voters and community leaders that are within driving distance of his home. Biden’s campaign says it will begin resuming normal travel and campaign activities, but only when health officials and state and local authorities say it is safe.
Questioned about the coronavirus, Trump chided Fauci, the National Institutes of Health expert, and repeated false claims that anybody could get a test and that increased testing was the only reason that the U.S. was seeing more cases. When Wallace cited criticism about the lack of a national plan to confront the virus, Trump said, “I take responsibility always for everything because it’s ultimately my job, too,” and claimed, “I supplied everybody.”
Case are rising because people are infecting each other more than they were when most everyone was hunkered down. The percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus has been on the rise across nearly the entire country.
(AP)
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17 Responses
Hillary is just as guilty, as she has never accepted results of 2016 elections
At the end of this endless moronic pile of drivel, I noticed that its source was associated press! boy was I surprised!!! But seriously, how could anyone take these polls serious if election morning 2016 ALL the polls gave Hillary 85% chance to reach 270 in the electoral college! After several hours of exit polling that number went up to 89!!!
The biggest surprise of the interview was that he accepted to do it. His lunacy, stupidity and senility were on full display. Great thanks to Chris Wallace for his consistent fact based professionalism.
I have no doubt that IF Trump loses the election, whether by a little, a lot, or a landslide, he will blame it on voter fraud. Reality cannot penetrate the hair-sprayed comb-over.
I am disappointed that YWN published this headline. Nowhere did Trump indicate that he would not leave the WH if he loses the election. That is a narrative that comes directly from Hillary Clinton y”sh and the puppet Dems who refuse to take an interest in helping Americans manage. There is a reality that the election may be handicapped with the easily manipulated mail in ballots. The Dems have a significant history of cheating in elections, with the counting of votes from dead people and illegal immigrants. They have been shameless about it. They are the ones that push for voting rights for convicted felons, which guarantees more votes for them. Unfair, dishonest, and morally unjustifiable.
Yaaaawn
😴😴🥱😴😴
notice how he never asked Hillary if she will accept the results!
Biden said he has an army of lawyers if he loses by a close margin.
You Trump haters: There is good reason to believe voter fraud exists. Judicial Watch has gone to court in several states to clean up voter rolls; Los Angeles, for example, was ordered to remove 1.5 MILLION names. Also if you have been following the news there have been arrests for voter fraud in both Illinois and New Jersey. Plus, in the last election the Dems engaged in harvesting, in which they offered to pick up mail ballots and then discarded those marked Republican. So Trump would have every right to challenge the results, especially if you see Biden in action and know the Democrat agenda.
Has everybody forgotten that Democrat Al Gore, 20 years ago, refused to concede the election to George Bush and the country had to wait until the middle of December when the Supreme Court rejected Gore’s challenge to the Florida vote.
If he could do it, why shouldn’t Trump be able to do it if there are questions about the legitimacy of the voting results.
There were only two “stolen” elections for president, 1960 and 1876. In both cases the loser decided not to make a civil war about (though the loser in both cases had the last laugh). The loser in 1960 went on to be elected president twice, the the winning party in 1876 had to stab their most loyal allies in the back and ended up being shut out of a good many states for the next century. Since the ability of Democrats to “steal” votes through “harvesting” mail-in ballots is limited to states that are already under Democratic control (if the local election board isn’t super-blue, they will require a fair count and disqualify phony ballots), that means the Democrats will get more popular votes (which is not legally significant) but won’t gain extra electoral votes.
The statistics are increasing support those who feel the Covid19 crisis was a classic “boy crying wolf”, complaining about a smallpox type epidemic that would undermine society, but in turned out to be more of a bad version of the seasonal flu.
What does Hillary have to do with this? Did she do anything to prevent Trump’s inauguration?
It is remarkable that a sitting president would express less than complete confidence in the American democracy’s electoral process.
What exactly about that process should give him confidence? If a fraudulent result is announced we should certainly not accept it, just because it was announced. It should be challenged by every means available. To allow someone to take power by fraud is no more acceptable than to allow them to take it by force. Fraud is a kind of force.
rying to portray Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as lacking the mental prowess to serve as president.
Biden has never had the “mental prowess” to be president. He’s always been known as Slow Joe. But now it’s no longer about his prowess. Now it’s about sheer competence. It doesn’t take Trump to see what is in front of everyone’s eyes. Biden is over botel. He is senile, gaga, suffering from dementia. He is not physically capable of serving as president. If he is sworn in he will not be in charge of his administration. Edith Wilson got away with governing in her husband’s name, because there was no radio, television, or internet; “doctor” Jill Biden will not be able to repeat that act.
Trump said he could understand why Black Americans are upset about how police use force disproportionately against them.
He shouldn’t have said that, because it’s not true. He should have taken the opportunity to challenge this lie. Police force is not used at all against black Americans; it is used against black criminals, just as it is used against white criminals, brown criminals, red criminals, yellow criminals, and any other color criminals might come in.
The real issue is that the number of criminals who are black is way out of proportion to the number of Americans who are black. In particular young black men are more than 30 times more likely to be violent criminals than is the average American. That is why so many of them are arrested; and if they resist arrest, which they have no right to do, they are subject to the legitimate use of force, including if necessary deadly force.
Trump falsely asserted that “Biden wants to defund the police.”
Biden has turned his policy-making over to the Bernie Sanders “progressive” movement, who openly support abolishing police. What Biden himself thinks is of no consequence, since even if he becomes president he will be only a figurehead for the hard leftists who will run the administration.
false claims that anybody could get a test and that increased testing was the only reason that the U.S. was seeing more cases.
These claims are not false, and it’s not AP’s place to editorialize like this. Nor YWN’s.
Since the ability of Democrats to “steal” votes through “harvesting” mail-in ballots is limited to states that are already under Democratic control (if the local election board isn’t super-blue, they will require a fair count and disqualify phony ballots),
Not so. Election boards are LOCAL, not state-run, and in each state, including not only swing states but even solid Republican ones, the urban centers and their election boards are dominated by Democrats, who routinely engage in shameless fraud. Miami-Dade and Broward Counties are prime examples of Democrat election boards who almost succeeded in stealing the 2000 election. King County in 2004 did succeed in stealing the Washington gubernatorial election. Dane County in Wisconsin routinely does its bit to throw the state to Democrats.
What does Hillary have to do with this? Did she do anything to prevent Trump’s inauguration?
There was nothing she could do; if there had been, she would certainly have done it. But she has never accepted the result as legitimate. Nor has Stacey Abrams accepted her loss in Georgia.
huju, What does Hillary have to do with this? Hillary and DNC commissioned and paid in full for 2016 version of the Protocols of Elders of Zion called Steele Dossier in order illegally sabotage Trump’s campaign and then destroy his presidency, utilizing in the process CIA, FBI, DOJ, NSA and State Department. Nice try,
@huju What does Hillary have to do with this? Did she do anything to prevent Trump’s inauguration?
Ask James Comey, John Clapper, Peter Strzuck, Lisa Page, Barak Obama, Joe Biden, and the other in their ugly hit-team how simply stepped down and let Trump do his job as president.