Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive 2020 presidential nominee, told “The Daily Show” Wednesday that he expects President Donald Trump to try to “steal” the presidential election and expressed hope that the United States military would remove Donald Trump from the White House if he refused to vacate.
Echoing conspiracy theorists, including failed 2016 presidential contender Hillary Clinton, Biden explained vague comments he’d made previously, telling “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah that he believes Trump will not accept a loss at the ballot box and that the president will try to create chaos around the election.
“This president’s going to try to steal this election,” Biden said.
The answer was in reference to the Georgia primary, held Tuesday, which turned into an unqualified disaster after confused voters submitted mail-in ballots and precincts were reordered and moved.
“This is a guy who said that all mail-in ballots are fraudulent, voting by mail, while he sits behind the desk in the Oval Office and writes his mail-in ballot to vote in the primary,” Biden added.
Support for voting via absentee ballot is, of course, different from supporting a fully mail-in election, and even Twitter, which fact-checked the president’s claims of vote fraud stemming from mail-in elections, admitted that there are problems with vote-by-mail programs. The president and other Republican officials have expressed concerns that Democrats are looking to sow confusion and manipulate November’s election results by pressing for a fully mail-in vote.
Biden and others, like Clinton, have previously expressed concern that President Trump may try to “move” the November elections over fears of a second wave of coronavirus infections. Since the presidential election date is set by Federal law as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, such a move would require an act of Congress — a Congress that is none too friendly to the president.
Biden did express hope, though, that if Trump resisted an unfavorable election outcome that the United States military would conspire to forcibly eject him from the White House.
“You have four chiefs of staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and so many rank-and-file military personnel saying, ‘Whoa, we’re not a military state. This is not who we are,’” Biden said. “I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”
There is no indication that Trump would refuse to accept election results declaring Biden the winner. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany went further on Fox News Thursday morning, calling Biden a conspiracy theorist.
“This president is looking forward to November. This president is hard at work for the American people,” she said. “And leave it to Democrats to grandstand and level these conspiracy theories.”