Trump pledges to concede 'fair' loss before quickly casting doubt on election integrity

05 Nov 2024, 18:53 by https://www.facebook.com/17108852506 · AlterNet

Image via Screengrab.
David Badash
November 05, 2024Bank

Four years after losing the 2020 presidential election that he has never formally conceded, Donald Trump on Election Day claimed he will concede this year’s election if it’s “fair,” before attempting to sow doubt on how secure America’s elections are. The Republican presidential nominee also insisted he did not need to tell his supporters there should be no violence, despite the January 6, 2021 insurrection that Trump was impeached for inciting.

Told by a reporter at a polling station that some Americans are “concerned that if you lost this election, you wouldn’t concede again,” Trump was asked, “what do you say to those people?”

The Republican presidential nominee replied, “I think they’re crazy.”

“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’d be the first one to acknowledge it,” Trump said (video below), a claim he also made in 2020. “And I think it’s, well, so far, I think it’s been fair. I think there’s been a lot of court cases, both sides are lawyered up. Thousands of lawyers are involved, you know, thousands, can you imagine?”

“And part of that is because we have too complicated a process,” Trump alleged, before touting the sophistication of watermarking paper ballots. “If we had a piece of paper, watermarked, you know that paper is more sophisticated now than computers. It’s watermarked paper.”

Trump then moved on to criticizing computers, saying, “hopefully they’ll be able to get these expensive computers going.”

“You know, the reason you use computers is to make time, so that it’s like fast. You don’t use them so that you have to come up with an answer three days later, and that’s a little scary when they say, what what are they doing? You use a computer because it calculates quickly. And you use paper because you save costs, but the paper turns out to be much quicker than the computer. There’s something wrong with that, so we don’t like that.”

Amid concerns in 2016 that he would not concede if he lost, Trump said: “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election, if I win.”

Early in 2020 Trump began to lay the groundwork to contest that election, which his own Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Chris Krebs, would come to tell Americans, “was the most secure in American history.” He did so again this year.

Asked if he should tell supporters there should be no violence if he loses, Trump quickly snapped (video below), “I don’t have to tell them that, that they’ll be no violence. Of course there will be no violence. My supporters are not violent people.”

“I don’t have to tell them that. I certainly don’t want any violence, I certainly don’t have to tell — these are great people. These are people that believe in no violence, unlike your question. You believe in violence.”

Critics lashed out at Trump.

“He needs to leave out the qualifier. If he loses, he loses. The damage he has done to our fundamental American institutions and processes, including democracy itself, will not be easily repaired. The sooner he is gone, the better for us all,” remarked professor of political science Jeff DeWitt.

Justin Kanew, founder of the progressive website The Tennessee Holler, responded to Trump’s remarks about violence: “That part at the end gives big ‘I know you are but what am I?’ Vibes. Also: last time happened, bro.”

Watch the videos below or at this link.

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