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“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough ripped Donald Trump for reluctantly giving up power and repeatedly denying losing the US election in 2020 and compared it to how Rishi Sunak graciously accepted defeat in Thursday’s UK election.
On Friday, the show played a clip of Sunak delivering a speech to his country and accepting the election results after his party lost by a landslide to the Labour Party. Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, is now the country’s prime minister.
“To the country, I would like to say first and foremost that I am sorry. I have given this job my all, but you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change,” Sunak said. “And yours is the only judgment that matters.”
“I leave this job honored to have been your prime minister. This is the best country in the world, and it is thanks entirely to you, the British people, the true source of all our achievements, our strengths, and our greatness,” the departing prime minister said.
The show then cut to Scarborough, who said: “We don’t have that here in the United States…That’s called a peaceful transfer of power.”
“Actually that’s what we had in the US from the late 1700s until the year 2020 when Donald Trump refused to do it,” he said. “See, it’s better that way because you actually let the voters decide. And that’s what democracies and constitutional republics are all about.”
The dig at Trump comes shortly after the 2024 GOP frontrunner evaded agreeing to unequivocally accept the results of the November presidential election at a debate against President Joe Biden.
Instead, he told the CNN moderators: “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely.”
The former president spent countless hours following his 2020 election defeat arguing over what he believed to be an unfair, “stolen” and “rigged” race.
After the 2020 election, a House Select Committee called Trump the “central cause” of the January 6 Capitol riot, in which a mob chanted to “hang” then-vice president Mike Pence and tried to stop the certification of the election for Biden.
Trump also filed lawsuits contesting the election results in courts across the country due to alleged voter fraud — none of which were successful.
According to a CNN poll released this week, a mere 28 percent believe Trump will concede if he loses in the 2024 election — and a whopping 71 percent doubt that Trump will.
