Trump says he will only accept 2024 election results ‘if everything is honest’
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Former President Donald Trump speaks to guests during a rally on May 1, 2024, in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
CNN
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Former President Donald Trump refused to unconditionally accept the results of the upcoming 2024 presidential election in an interview Wednesday with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results. I don’t change that,” Trump said in the interview. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the country’s rights.”
Trump also repeated false claims that he won the state of Wisconsin during the 2020 election. “If you go back and look at all the things that were uncovered, you will see that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the Journal Sentinel. “It also showed that I won elections in other places.”
President Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020, pulling ahead by about 21,000 votes — a victory of about 0.6 percentage points.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was rigged or “stolen,” despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted the former president last year, alleging that Trump violated several laws in his attempts to overturn the election. Trump has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to criminal charges.
Throughout his political career, Trump has regularly refused to accept the results of an election or commit to admitting defeat. After finishing second in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Trump accused Texas Sen. Ted Cruz of fraud and called for a new race. Later, while facing Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump baselessly claimed that the election he ultimately won was “rigged” and repeatedly refused to say whether he would accept the result. He again avoided a commitment before the 2024 elections.
The presumptive Republican nominee joined House Speaker Mike Johnson for a news conference earlier this month to, in part, “draw attention” to what they say are state proposals and lawsuits that would allow noncitizens vote, CNN previously reported.
Currently, federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Noncitizens who vote illegally risk fines and could face up to a year in prison and deportation. Trump, however, has consistently made false claims that Democrats want undocumented migrants to enter the country to impact the election, trying to stoke fear around immigration and election security ahead of the November elections.
Trump returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday for the first time since his criminal trial in New York began in earnest last month. The presumptive Republican nominee spent the day organizing rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan, two swing states he won in 2016 but lost to Biden in 2020.
CNN’s Alayna Treene, Kristen Holmes, Kate Sullivan, Steve Contorno and Alison Main contributed to this report.
