In a new interview with CNN, President Joe Biden predicted that Donald Trump, currently the presumptive presidential nominee from the Republican Party for this year’s elections, won’t accept the results of this year’s presidential face-off.
“He may not accept the outcome of the election? I promise you he won’t,” Biden remarked, referring to the ex-president — who, of course, similarly refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential race, which progressed into months of lies and a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol connected to a series of deaths, an active series of arrests and criminal cases, and major, lengthy sentences.
Trump has recently been pressed in interviews about how he’d react to the 2024 presidential election results, particularly in the event that he loses.
“You said, “I think we’re going to win and there won’t be violence.” What if you don’t win, sir?” Trump was asked in an interview for TIME.
“I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election,” Trump said in reply, sparking concerns.
It’s all, of course, similar to some of what he’s already said in the context of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that already happened in early 2021 in connection with lies of a stolen election. That very day, Trump posted on his account on what was then called Twitter that “these are the things and events that happen” when an election is stolen, as though in his imagining, the violence against police and others that day was a perfectly logical outcome to what he falsely asserted had happened in 2020. And beyond the potential threat of violence, Trump still sticks to his delusions about that year’s presidential election, years after it happened and years after every credible, widely accepted authority to add its input began saying the race was secure.
It’s spreading, too. Even Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), believed to be a possibility for Trump’s vice presidential pick this year, recently refused in an interview to commit to accepting the outcome of this year’s presidential election, however it ultimately went.
