For all his talk about former President Donald Trump’s election lies and the distrust and division they sowed among the public, President Joe Biden is no better.
During his second solo press conference on Wednesday evening, Biden was asked whether he believes “the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate” if Congress refuses to pass his proposed voting rights bill. Biden’s answer should have been, “Yes, of course.” Instead, he began ranting about election integrity reforms passed by Republican states, accusing them of rigging the system “to alter the outcome of the election.”
“It easily could be illegitimate,” Biden said of the 2022 midterm elections. “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit. … The increase of the prospect of it being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”
The president told me yesterday that the 2022 midterms “easily could be illegitimate.” He added also “I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit.” https://t.co/3yswRFwtsQ
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) January 20, 2022
In no time at all, Biden’s team was trying to clean up the president’s mess. White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to spin Biden’s words to mean something very different than what he obviously said, and Vice President Kamala Harris decided to act like the whole thing never happened.
Here’s Psaki:
He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) January 20, 2022
And Harris:
Is President Biden really concerned that we may not have free and fair elections? –@SavannahGuthrie to @VP pic.twitter.com/pQmv6MLVb5
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 20, 2022
But the damage has already been done. Biden, like Trump before him, is planting seeds of distrust in the 2022 election results because he knows they’re not going to be favorable to him or his party. This has nothing to do with voting rights or election integrity reforms; it’s about politics and power.
Instead of trying to gaslight and lie his way out of this, Biden should own up to his irresponsible comments and acknowledge the devastating effect they could have on our electoral process. If he doesn’t, he’ll be no different from Trump.
