Trump claims he will accept 2024 election results if he loses – under one condition
Former president Donald Trump has once again refused to commit to blanketly accepting the election results if he doesn’t win the 2024 presidential election as he faces multiple indictments related to alleged 2020 election interference.
After holding a rally in Wisconsin, Mr Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Mr Trump said. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be – a lot of changes have been made over the last few years – but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” the former president said.
“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Mr Trump told the outlet. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”
The presumptive GOP nominee said he would “let it be known” if he believed something was awry in the 2024 election. “I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he added. “But no, I expect an honest election and we expect to win maybe very big.”
Mr Trump’s comments on Wednesday echoed what he said earlier this year.
Speaking at a rally in Ohio in March, “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s gonna be the least of it.”
This isn’t the first time he has refused to accept the results of a presidential election.
At the final televised debate before the 2016 election, after he was asked if he would accept the results, he replied: “I will look at it at the time, what I’ve seen is so bad.”
These remarks potentially served as a preview to the 2020 election. The former president was found to be the “central cause” of the mob that stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, the day that the election results were being certified, according to the January 6 House Select Committee.
Mr Trump’s interview on Wednesday also comes as he stands criminal trial in Manhattan related to election interference.
He is accused of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to so-called hush money payments paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election in exchange for her silence over an alleged affair with Mr Trump 10 years prior.
The former president also faces federal charges and criminal charges in Georgia related to 2020 election interference.
On Wednesday, Mr Trump insisted that he wanted “people that vote to cast an honest ballot. I want the ballots to be counted honestly. I don’t want people going to legislatures and getting things not approved and then doing it anyway”.
Just last week, 18 people in Arizona were indicted over a fake electors scheme. The list of those indicted includes Trump allies, such as his former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his once chief-of-staff Mark Meadows, although their names have been redacted until they are served, the Arizona attorney general said.
Separately, last month, Mr Trump himself was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a fake electors scheme in Michigan by a state investigator.
