US President Donald Trump on Sunday declined to say whether he would accept the results of the upcoming presidential election in November, while also slamming mail-in voting, claiming that it would “rig the election”.
In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Trump said that it was too early to make such a guarantee, and that he would “have to see”, a comment strikingly similar to Trump’s 2016 remarks about whether he would accept the results of that election. At the time, when asked if he would respect the will of the voters, Trump said, “I will keep you in suspense.”
Though polls show him trailing behind former Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by significant margins, Trump dismissed them as “fake” and asserted that he was not losing, since he had seen polls that showed him in the lead. He also doubled down on the dangers of main-in voting, stating—without evidence—that it would involve robbed mailboxes, forged signatures, and ballots printed by foreign countries.
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 has seen his popularity erode over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and in the aftermath of nationwide protests centered on racial injustice in America that erupted after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis nearly two months ago. In the interview, an agitated Trump struggled to defend his administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, at one point falsely claiming that the US had “one of the lowest mortality rates in the world” from the virus. He continued to downplay the situation, attributing the recent surge in cases to increased testing and said that many infected people “automatically” recover from the virus. “No country has ever done what we’ve done in terms of testing. We are the envy of the world,” Trump said. “You look at other countries, they don’t even do tests. They do tests if somebody walks into the hospital.” This comes after his bold and proud claims that he had asked his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, since it showed more cases.
When asked about racial discrimination and policing in the country, Trump attacked Biden for wanting to defund the police and reiterated his previous claim that white people are fatally shot in high numbers as well. Statistics show that while more white Americans are killed by the police overall, people of color are killed at much higher rates relative to the demographic make-up of the country. Trump also refused to say whether the Confederate battle emblem, which has come to represent racial oppression and slavery for many Americans, was an offensive symbol. Instead he defended those who displayed the flags, and said that pulling down emblems and Confederate monuments was “cancel culture”.
As Biden Leads in the Polls, Trump Refuses to Commit to Accepting Election Results
Trump claimed that mail-in voting would “rig the election”.
July 20, 2020
Source: Associated Press