Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) insisted political candidates on either side of the aisle should feel free to contest election results if they feel there is reason to doubt the results.
NBC News anchor Kristen Welker asked the Florida Republican if he would “accept the election results of 2024 no matter what happens?” The NBC host’s question set off a back-and-forth as Rubio challenged the question’s premise.
“No matter what happens? No,” Rubio initially responded. “If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested by either side.”
Rubio continued by questioning why the NBC anchor had posed the question to him specifically.
Political figures on both sides of the political aisle have called into question results in recent years, following election wins by both Republicans and Democrats. However, former President Donald Trump, a Republican, has earned pushback from Democrats and liberal political commentators in recent years for contesting the 2020 presidential election results.
Trump, who is running again for the White House in 2024, faces both federal criminal charges and state-level criminal charges in Georgia stemming from his efforts to contest the 2020 results.
Rubio insisted that Democrats should also be made to answer for casting doubt on past elections Trump and other Republicans have won.
“The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000,” Rubio said, referring to Republican wins in the 2000, 2004, and 2016 presidential races.
Welker responded by insisting that Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent, conceded her race. Rubio then replied by noting Clinton later questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 contest.
Clinton said in a 2017 interview with NPR that she would not rule out efforts to contest the 2016 results, amid unproven claims Russian interference impacted the outcome of that race. Clinton said during that same NPR interview that she also believes the U.S. should do away with the electoral college system following the 2016 results in which Trump won a majority of electoral college electors despite Clinton winning the popular vote contest.
In another 2019 interview with CBS News, Clinton said that Trump is an “illegitimate president” and “knows” the 2016 race “wasn’t on the level.”
Rubio went on to say some Democrats still in office in Congress had refused to certify the 2004 election results in Ohio in favor of Republican President George W. Bush’s reelection. Rubio said other Democrats have floated refusing to certify a 2024 victory for Trump on arguments he committed an insurrection and thus is not eligible to hold office again.
Rubio proceed to ask Welker if she had asked any Democrats whether they would accept the 2024 election results “no matter what” as she had asked him. “I’ll bet you you’ve never asked a Democrat that question,” he added.
Welker shifted the exchange to Rubio’s decision to certify the 2020 election results for Biden, despite Trump’s efforts to contest the results. She played a clip of remarks he made on the Senate floor in January of 2021, in which he said, “Democracy is held together by people’s confidence in the election and their willingness to accept the results.”
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“So by your definition, are Donald Trump’s claims undermining the Americans’ confidence in democracy, given he has not conceded the last election and he just said in recent days twice that he won Minnesota,” Welker asked.
“I think what undermines people’s confidence in the election is when you have places like Wisconsin with over 500 illegal drop box locations, and places like Georgia where liberal groups are–where they charge people $10 per vote,” Rubio replied. “What undermines elections is when NBC News and every major news outlet in America in 2020 censored the Biden laptop story, which turned out to be true, not Russian misinformation. Unprecedented. You couldn’t even talk about it on social media; they would deplatform you.”
Welker responded by reiterating that Rubio certified the 2020 election results, though the Florida senator said he made that decision at a point when he saw no other option. She and Rubio proceeded to argue about issues in the 2020 election before she cited a claim by former U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Chris Krebs, a Trump administration official, who called 2020 “the most secure election in recent history.”
Rubio argued that Welker’s comment about the 2020 election was not relevant to her original question about accepting the 2024 results.
“If [the 2024 election is unfair] we’re going to do the same thing Democrats do; we’re going to go to court and point out the fact that states aren’t following their own election laws,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll have a fair election, and it will be unquestioned.”
Welker argued that Republican litigants lost their 2020 election challenges when they brought their complaints before the various courts, “and there was no widespread fraud, as you know.”
“I never used the word ‘widespread fraud,'” Rubio shot back, prompting Welker to end the back-and-forth argument.
