A top Senate Democrat who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee said he disagreed with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s statement that former Vice President Joe Biden should not accept the presidential election results “under any circumstances,” ABC News Radio reported.
“I respect her. I like her. But I think she’s just flat-out wrong,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton surrogate, on “This Week” Sunday.
“The election itself is going to be announced,” he continued. “The winner will be announced at some point.”
Durbin echoed GOP Senate leaders in calling for a decisive outcome and peaceful aftermath, even as the more radical factions in his party threaten to riot and commit acts of arson and vandalism if they don’t get their way.
“If we are going to maintain a democracy, peaceful transition through an election is the only way to do it,” he said. “Whoever the winner is, if it is clear and legal, that should be announced and the other party should concede.”
Clinton’s remark last month added fuel to the fire as widespread concerns linger that Democrat officials may exploit a mail-in-voting scheme to rig the election in their favor.
Since Biden is unlikely to win on Nov. 3, Democrats have tried to prepare the American people for a delayed announcement of the presidential election’s winner.
Clinton said she hopes to convince Americans that the mail-in ballots trickling in days and weeks after the election should give Biden the legitimate victory.
Despite Clinton’s clear anti-democratic impulses and the post-election “war games” by groups like the George Soros-linked Transition Integrity Project strategizing how to strong-arm Democrats into victory, the media has focused, unsurprisingly on President Donald Trump’s more careful comments about conceding the election.
“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that,” he said in response to a question last week from partisan Playboy reporter Brian Karem.
Some leftist outlets rushed to torque the narrative by suggesting any efforts on the part of Trump to contest the results would be tantamount to a coup.
However, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany clarified that Trump would accept the results of a “free and fair election.”
Others close to the president, including Eric Trump and former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, noted that there was no reason for Trump to accept the false, hypothetical premise since he intended to win re-election.
Clinton has flipped her position on respecting the election results several times as the politics demanded.
During the 2016 election, she condemned then-presidential candidate Donald Trump for saying that he would have to review the election results before accepting them.
However, she herself later refused to accept the unfavorable results, scapegoating everything from racism to Russia.
She changed her mind once again in an Aug. 24 interview with The Recount.
“I think this is gonna drag out, and eventually I do believe [Biden] will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” she said.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
