President Joe Biden said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump would not accept the results of the 2024 election.
“He might not accept the result of the election? I promise he won’t,” Biden said in an interview with CNN, adding that it was “dangerous.”
Biden was responding to a question about Trump’s comments last week in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results. I won’t change that. If it isn’t, we have to fight for the country’s rights,” Trump said.
Biden said of his rival on Wednesday: “The guy is not a Democrat with a small ‘d’.”
Biden’s campaign and the White House have already responded to Trump’s statement. And Biden has already criticized Trump for election denial, painting him as a threat to democracy. His statement on Wednesday directly predicted how Trump might behave in November.
Biden campaign spokesman James Singer said in a statement last week about Trump’s comments to the Journal Sentinel: “Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the Constitution and a threat to our democracy.
“The American people will hand him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence and his thirst for revenge,” Singer continued.
Separately, at a media briefing last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denounced “dangerous election denial conspiracy theories” promoted by some on the right.
“There is no place to put yourself — to put yourself above your entire country,” Jean-Pierre said in response to a question about Trump’s comments. “As President Biden has previously committed, he will accept the will of the American people.”
In recent interviews, Trump has doubled down on questioning the election results. Asked in an interview Tuesday with NBC affiliate WGAL of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, whether he thinks he should have accepted the results of the 2020 election, he said, “No, it would have been a terrible thing.” He later added that if there are no free and fair elections, “we should always have the right to contest them.”
In an interview last month with Time magazine, Trump was asked about the possibility of political violence if he lost the election.
“If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he said.
“It always depends on the fairness of an election. I don’t think they’re going to be able to do the things they did last time. I don’t think they’re going to be able to get away with it,” Trump said. he said. “And if that’s the case, we’re going to win in record fashion.”
