President Trump shrugged off an accusation from Joe Biden that he would try to steal the election, saying if he doesn’t win he’ll “go on and do other things.”
“Certainly if I don’t win, I don’t win. I mean, you know, go on and do other things,” Trump said during a Fox News interview that aired Friday afternoon.
“I think that would be a very sad thing for our country,” he added.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, predicted during an interview on “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” on Wednesday that Trump “is going to try to steal this election.” Biden called it his “single greatest concern.”
The former vice president said in the same interview that he was confident the military would escort Trump out of the White House if he lost yet refused to leave.
Asked about that, Trump mocked Biden’s mental acuity.
In previous interviews Trump has said he will accept the results of the 2020 election — win or lose.
“You will accept the results?” Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked Trump during an interview in the past year.
“100 percent. Sure,” Trump said.
“And you will accept whatever happens in 2020?” Todd pressed.
“Sure,” Trump replied.
But some Democrats are still worried that the president will try somehow to interfere or undermine the outcome, pointing to Trump’s allegation that there would be massive voter fraud through mail-in voting (without presenting much evidence to show that’s true).
Trump has railed against states shifting to a broad absentee-ballot system to accommodate voters uncomfortable going to their polling places while there is a global coronavirus pandemic.
This isn’t the first time Biden has suggested Trump would seek to tamper with the election. Biden cautioned a few months ago that Trump would try to delay voting over the coronavirus threat — which the president doesn’t have the authority to do.
Matt Viser contributed to this report.
