Schiff’s remarks come days after President Joe Biden said he didn’t know whether the upcoming election would be “peaceful.”
Schiff’s remarks come days after President Joe Biden said he didn’t know whether the upcoming election would be “peaceful.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., on Sunday echoed President Joe Biden's remarks last week that the upcoming election would be "free and fair," but maybe not "peaceful."
"If it is close, if [former President] Donald Trump loses again, as I expect that he will, he will contest it," Schiff told moderator Kristen Welker on NBC News' "Meet the Press." "He has more reason to contest it than he did before, not because of any flaw in the election, but because Donald Trump believes, and perhaps with reason, that if he doesn't succeed at the ballot box, he may be going to jail. So he's going to challenge the results."
His comments follow remarks from Biden atthe White House press briefing room on Friday, in which the president told reporters he was confident that the upcoming election "will be free and fair" but didn't know "whether it will be peaceful."
Honestly, Trump is so fucking ready to contest the election he might do it if he wins. If he does win the vote I'd wager money on him accidentally falling back on "this election was stolen" rhetoric at his acceptance speech anyways.
Him winning would shift the rhetoric into removing the election process since it was so questionable. I doubt the goal of replacing everyone with those loyal to the President will stop in the administration. If nothing else, more quid pro quo. He's shown that with the latest disasters, suggesting that he'd restrict help from those not supporting him.
Frankly, I hope Biden and Schiff are deliberately downplaying the problem to assuage the public and encourage voting, because if they genuinely believe what they say then they don't fully grasp the magnitude of MAGA's attack on the elections system.
In reality, the best you could optimistically say is that the voting itself will be mostly free and fair, aside from all the voter suppression, voter intimidation, and tactics like allocating too few voting booths to increase wait times and then criminalizing handing out water to people waiting in line. The rest of the election process -- the counting and certification of the votes -- is unlikely to be free and fair at all in places like Georgia and Arizona, and that's even before we get into all of Trump's bullshit lawsuits challenging the results and trying to get a SCOTUS coronation.