Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said he believes that President Donald Trump will lose the November 2020 election but not honor the election results and refuse to leave office. Biden said the military will be ready to escort Trump out of the White House should that possibility arise.
“I promise you: I am absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch,” Biden said during an interview with The Daily Show host Trevor Noah Wednesday night.
Biden first shared his concern that he believes Trump will try to “steal” the election.
“This president is going to try to steal this election,” Biden said. “This is the guy who said all mail-in ballots are fraudulent.”
Biden warned that mail-in ballots could cause delayed election results, which Trump might then question.
“Have you ever considered what would happen if the election results came out as you being the winner and Trump refused to leave,” Noah asked.
“Yes I have,” Biden said. “And I was so damn proud to hear you have four chiefs of staff, coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump, and you have so many rank and file military personnel saying ‘woah, we’re not a military state, this is not who we are.'”
Biden’s comments appeared to reference current and former military officials who have voiced opposition to using military troops to respond to rioting and looting in many cities across America following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody more than two weeks ago.
“I promise you, I am absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch,” Biden said.
Reports have previously circulated that Biden told donors at a virtual campaign fundraiser that he believes Trump would try to use the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to postpone the November election.
“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden reportedly said.
Biden’s latest comments, theorizing Trump would instead dispute the results of a mail-in ballot election, comes as Trump has opposed largely Democratic pushes to conduct the November election by mail.
Trump had warned in a May tweet that “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.”
Twitter marked Trump’s tweet with a fact check label, indicating the social media platform’s position that it believes his claims to be false.
The Heritage Foundation separately maintains an Election Fraud Database in which it has documented 1,285 voter fraud cases across the U.S., of which 1,110 resulted in criminal convictions. The database includes dozens of instances of criminal convictions obtained over cases of “Fraudulent Use Of Absentee Ballots.”
