Near the end of Thursday evening’s presidential debate, CNN moderator Dana Bash asked Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP candidate for president, one of the more pressing questions facing American democracy.
“Will you pledge tonight that, once all legal challenges have been exhausted, that you will accept the results of this election regardless of who wins, and that you will say right now that political violence in any form is unacceptable?” Bash said.
“Well, I shouldn’t have to say that, but of course I believe that,” Trump said, referring to the question about political violence. But from there the former president’s answer veered into rambling jabs at President Joe Biden, including about Biden’s foreign policy.
He avoided the question of whether he’d accept the results of this November’s election. So Bash asked Trump again.
“The question was: Will you accept the results of the question regardless of who wins?”
Again, Trump opted to talk about Biden’s policy regarding the war in Ukraine. Eventually, after being asked a third time, Trump responded to Bash’s question.
“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” Trump said. “I would have much rather accepted these, but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”
Trump — whose lies about the 2020 election helped foment the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — is currently facing state and federal indictments over his alleged interference in the last presidential contest with Biden.
“I doubt you’ll accept it because you’re a whiner,” Biden told Trump on the debate stage. “Something snapped in you when you lost last time.”
Earlier in the night, Trump stood up for Jan. 6 rioters and told Biden he “ought to be ashamed” about how the Department of Justice had gone about prosecuting people who stormed the Capitol that day.
