The White House sought Thursday to tamp down a firestorm over whether President Trump would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if defeated in November, as the president’s allies argued his comments were misconstrued and it was the Democrats who failed to accept the 2016 election results.
Trump told Fox News he would accept if the Supreme Court ruled he had lost to Democratic challenger Joe Biden. “The president will accept the results of a free and fair election,” said White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in Thursday’s briefing. “But I think that your question is more fitting to be asked of Democrats.”
McEnany opened the briefing by listing examples of what she described as Democrats violating American political norms. “They’ve proposed court-packing — an egregious idea,” she said. “They’ve entertained impeachment as punishment for the president exercising his lawful Article Two, Section Two authority to appoint — nominate, rather — a justice to the Supreme Court. They’ve advocated for the abolition of the Electoral College.”
“These are all the tactics that they’re using to sow chaos and discord,” McEnany continued. “Likewise, they’re endorsing a mass mail-out ballot system that will likely lead to the kind of weeklong delay New York witnessed in its recent primary.”
When asked directly about Trump’s Wednesday comments, McEnany was dismissive of the president’s interlocutor. “You are referring to the question asked by the Playboy reporter, right?” she asked.
“He could have answered the question better, sure,” conceded a Republican operative close to the Trump reelection campaign. “But the idea that he said anything close to holding on to power after a loss is ridiculous.”
“Trump is never going to concede the election before the votes are counted,” said the operative. “He isn’t going to unilaterally disarm, while Democrats are lawyering up in every close state.”
The cleanup came after a number of top Republicans publicly, if only implicitly, disavowed Trump’s previous noncommittal response. This included not just Never Trumpers like Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, but also White House allies such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican in the House.
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Liberals went further. “What the president is doing here is the most explicit that he has been about his plans for this election,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes told his viewers on Wednesday night. “He’s plotting, in open, in public, repeatedly, a coup to steal the election and hold on to power.” Hayes called it an “authoritarian power grab.”
Others who pointed to Trump’s frequent criticism of mail-in ballots made a more modest claim: that Trump was sowing seeds of doubt about the outcome in preparation for a Bush v. Gore-style Supreme Court ruling on his behalf, on the eve of naming what would be his third justice. Hayes warned of a scenario “where the margins are tight and the outcome is not obvious right away. And that’s what the president is very explicitly planning for, because those tight margins, that ambiguity sets in motion his plan to steal the election.”
Trump sparked the controversy with a vague answer to a Wednesday press question about transferring power after a defeat. “We’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster,” he said. “Get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
Allies of the president argued he was simply keeping his options open for any legal fight that will happen in a close, contested election in multiple states, which recent polling suggests is possible. Hillary Clinton has publicly urged Biden not to concede if the result is ambiguous. Biden has said he would accept a loss if every vote was counted.
“Boring,” was the one-word response given by a former Trump 2016 campaign official when asked about the reaction to the president’s comments. Another veteran of that run pointed out that even though Trump warned against a “rigged” election anytime there was any perceived unfairness to him, it was Clinton who spent the next four years casting doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome and suggesting Russia fixed the election, followed by a lengthy special counsel investigation and ultimately impeachment.
Democrats have, in the past, discredited Republican election wins, citing the supposed “Southern Strategy” employed by Richard Nixon or the “October surprise” allegation that Ronald Reagan’s team negotiated to extend the Iranian hostage crisis to influence the 1980 election.
Still, the criticism of Trump’s approach to questions about leaving power after a loss is not limited to liberals. “What surprises me is that anyone is surprised,” said Christian Ferry, a Republican strategist who has endorsed Biden. “He has been laying the groundwork for this argument for months, and this time, finally said exactly what is on his mind.”
