President Donald Trump has shown no indication of any willingness to concede the election, no matter the fact that Joe Biden conclusively won. Instead of concession, Trump has opted to sling totally baseless conspiracy theories alleging that some kind of plot against him has unfolded on the level of local election authorities, who he ludicrously claims have meddled with vote tallies in Biden’s favor, which there’s absolutely zero evidence for. On this Sunday’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — who is one of the only Republican Senators to ever even make a show of standing up to Trump — shamed the president’s nonsense.
Romney observed the following to CNN host Jake Tapper:
‘You’re not gonna change the nature of President Trump in these last days, apparently, of his presidency. He is who he is — and he has a relatively relaxed relationship with the truth, and so he’s gonna keep on fighting until the very end, but I’m convinced that once all remedies have been exhausted, if those are exhausted in a way that’s not favorable to him, he will accept the inevitable, but don’t expect him to go quietly in the night — that’s not how he operates.’
Separately, Romney added that he “would prefer to see a more graceful departure but that’s just not in the nature of the man.” That’s putting it lightly. Watch Romney’s comments below:
Romney on Trump refusing to concede: "If he does not win on a legitimate basis, he ceases to be president when Joe Biden is sworn in. It's as simple as that. I would prefer to see the world watching a more grateful departure, but that's just not in the nature of the man." pic.twitter.com/ffcQIs9hup
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 8, 2020
Trump has outright claimed that he won the election, which is just nonsense. He has claimed that Republican observers were systematically blocked from watching the ballot-counting process, which is a lie — but he suggests that votes that were processed while Republicans weren’t watching (they were) should be thrown out. As mentioned, Trump also directly alleges that there’s a nefarious conspiracy against him, with local authorities supposedly including fraudulent or otherwise invalid votes. He’s pointed to changing vote tallies as evidence for his claims, but the tallies have been changing against him because… votes have been getting counted. This concept isn’t complicated. There’s no automatic conspiracy here.
Romney has spoken out against the president’s election-related nonsense in the past. Last Friday, he issued a statement condemning Trump for casting baseless doubt on the integrity of the election. As Romney put it, Trump’s behavior “damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames dangerous and destructive passions.”
As for those “passions” — police already apprehended two heavily armed men in the vicinity of a Philadelphia vote-counting facility, which they may have planned to attack. Under the cover of Trump’s nonsensical complaints, a significant number of his supporters seem intent on refusing to accept the results of the election.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) November 6, 2020
In his victory speech that he delivered late Saturday evening, Biden spoke about the need for the country to come together. He insisted that opponents should stop seeing the other side as enemies, and he extolled the benefit of working together to benefit the country and Americans as a whole. President-elect Joe Biden’s condemnation of the “demonization” of opponents sure is a 180 degree spin away from Trump’s rhetoric.
Featured Image (edited) via Gage Skidmore on Wikimedia Commons, available under a Creative Commons License
