President Joe Biden expressed doubts on Friday over whether the upcoming election would yield a peaceful transfer of power.
Asked at a White House press briefing if he had confidence that the election would be free and fair, as well as peaceful, Biden noted that those were “two separate questions.”
“I'm confident it will be free and fair. I don't know whether it will be peaceful,” Biden said. “The things that [former President Donald] Trump has said, and the things he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election, were very dangerous.”
Q: "Do you have confidence that it will be a free and fair election and that it will be peaceful?"
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 4, 2024
President Biden: "I'm confident it will be free and fair. I don't know whether it will be peaceful. The things that Trump has said...were very dangerous." pic.twitter.com/HrhpaooEHe
“I noticed that the vice presidential Republican candidate [JD Vance] did not say he’d accept the outcome of the upcoming election. They haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election,” Biden said, adding that he was “concerned about what they’re going to do.”
Biden's remarks come nearly four years after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol during the certification of Biden’s election victory.
On Friday, Vance again again dodged the question at a campaign rally, repeating the same “focused on the future” line he deployed at the debate to avoid taking a formal position on whether the 2020 election was won by Biden.
Biden previously warned Americans that Trump “means what he says” with regards to fighting a losing outcome, pointing to the former president’s suggestion that there would be a “bloodbath” should he lose.
Concerns over Trump’s unwillingness to concede his 2020 loss were rehashed earlier this week when Special Counsel Jack Smith released a 165-page court filing outlining Trump’s actions during his alleged election subversion plot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith’s filing claimed that Trump responded, “So what?” when informed that violent protests had driven Vice President Mike Pence into a secure hiding spot, and outlines Trump’s resistance to issuing a statement asking rioters to disperse.
