Joe Biden ‘not confident’ of a peaceful transfer of power if Donald Trump loses
In his first interview since ending his re-election bid, President Joe Biden has weighed in on what would happen if Donald Trump loses.
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US President Joe Biden has expressed doubt that there would be a peaceful transfer of power if Donald Trump loses the 2024 election.
In his first interview since ending his re-election bid, Mr Biden initially referred to a potential Trump victory before quickly catching himself.
“If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all,” he told CBS News Sunday Morning.
“I mean if Trump loses I’m not confident at all,” Mr Biden clarified in the interview, which will air in its entirety on Sunday, Washington DC time.
“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously,” the US President said of the Republican nominee.
“All the stuff about if we lose, there’ll be a bloodbath, it’s a stolen – look what they’re trying to do now in the local election districts where people count the votes, putting people in place in states where they’re going to count the votes.”
“You can’t love your country, only when you win,” Mr Biden said.
Mr Trump has been impeached twice and indicted twice over various alleged attempts to cheat in the 2020 election – which he still has not acknowledged he lost – and was convicted of 34 felonies over a hush money scheme to deceive voters in 2016.
His false claims of widespread fraud in 2020 preceded the storming of the US Capitol – and the wounding of more than 100 police officers – by a violent mob determined to prevent the certification of his defeat.
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WATCH: VANCE TRIES TO CONFRONT HARRIS
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance took reporters by surprise when he tried to confront Vice President Kamala Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz on an airport tarmac.
“I figured I’d come by and one just get a good look at the plane because hopefully it’s going to be my plane in a few months,” Mr Vance told campaign reporters on the tarmac in Wisconsin after approaching Air Force Two.
“I also thought you guys might get lonely because the vice president doesn’t answer questions from reporters and hasn’t for 17 days.”
Harris and Walz were posing for photos with girl scouts and appeared to have left seconds before Mr Vance walked over to them, according to the New York Post.
Harris’ campaign took aim at Mr Vance by posting video of his plane landing at the Eau Claire airport with the TikTok-style oral caption, “all of a sudden, I hear this agitating, grating voice.”
Trump-Vance campaign spokesman Steven Cheung tweeted back: “Make sure AF2 is deep cleaned because Lord only knows what @KamalaHarris and her team have done on there,” adding, “The smell alone on that plane must be crazy.”
Mr Vance appeared to take issue with Ms Harris ‘not taking reporters’ questions’, the New York Post reports.
“Have they given you guys an explanation for why she won’t take questions from reporters?” Mr Vance asked reporters.
He said it was “insulting” to Americans that Ms Harris hasn’t been giving interviews.
“I’d love her to just answer what she wants to do and also explain why every single position she has changed,” Mr Vance said.
“She pretends to be a tough on crime prosecutor and yet here she is wanting to defund the police. She’s the border czar, yet she’s opened up the American southern border.”
He then concluded: “This is a person who has to answer questions from the media and it’s disgraceful that she runs for you guys, and it’s also insulting to the American people.”
TRUMP SET TO DO ‘MAJOR INTERVIEW’ WITH MUSK
Donald Trump said he will sit down with tech billionaire Elon Musk for an interview next week.
“ON MONDAY NIGHT I’LL BE DOING A MAJOR INTERVIEW WITH ELON MUSK — Details to follow!” Mr Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
Musk is yet to comment on the planned interview.
Musk officially endorsed Mr Trump last month as the Republican nominee, on the same day the former US president was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
TRUMP ‘THRILLED’ BY HARRIS’S VP PICK
Donald Trump has declared he is “thrilled” with Kamala Harris’s choice of running mate, as he launched an all-out assault on the Democratic ticket by claiming they would turn the US into a communist country.
A day after the Vice President tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for November’s election against the former president, Mr Trump’s vice presidential pick JD Vance also unleashed on his opposite number by questioning his military record.
Mr Walz served for 24 years in the National Guard and rose to the rank of command sergeant major, although he retired just before his unit’s deployment to Iraq in 2005 as he prepared to run for Congress.
Thomas Behrends, who went in his place commanding a unit of 500 soldiers, told the New York Post that decision was “cowardice” as he called him a “traitor”.
Mr Vance, at his first campaign rally since Mr Walz was unveiled as Ms Harris’s running mate, blasted what he called his “stolen valour garbage”.
The Republican vice presidential candidate was a US Marine who deployed to Iraq for six months in his role as a military journalist.
“Do not pretend to be something you’re not,” he said of Mr Walz.
“And if he wants to criticise me for getting an Ivy League education, I’m proud of the fact that my Mamaw supported me, that I was able to make something of myself … I would be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did.”
Mr Walz had earlier seized on his military record as he blasted Mr Trump, saying he “doesn’t know the first thing about service” because he was “too busy serving himself”.
The former president hit back in an interview on Fox News, claiming Mr Walz was “a smarter version” of Ms Harris but that he was “very, very liberal”.
“He’s a shocking pick and I’m thrilled,” Mr Trump said.
“This is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner.”
Meanwhile, Ms Harris and Mr Walz will take their campaign to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before travelling to Detroit, Michigan, for a rally with members of the United Auto Workers union.
Just hours after Mr Walz was announced on Tuesday, the pair held the biggest Democratic event of the election so far in front of a raucous crowd of around 10,000 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
“We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum and I know exactly what we are up against,” Ms Harris told the crowd in Philadelphia.
ARMED MEN MARCHED ON WALZ’S HOME
In a newly published interview conducted in 2021, Mr Walz revealed how armed men came to his home in Minnesota, after the then-president goaded protesters angry over the state’s Covid restrictions and tweeted: “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”
Mr Walz told Politico that members of the far-right Proud Boys were among those who gathered at his residence.
And on January 6, when the US Capitol was invaded by Mr Trump’s supporters, he said that “some of these elements that believe the election was stolen marched on the residence, and that’s the one where it got way out of hand”.
“The state patrol had to evacuate my 14-year-old, find the dog, take him to an off-site location,” the Minnesota Governor said.
TRUMP SOFTENS ON DEBATE ULTIMATUM
Speaking on Fox News, Mr Trump also stepped back from his ultimatum that he would debate Ms Harris on the network on September 4 or he would not “see her at all”.
He said that election debates were “very important” and that “every network loves me very much right now”.
“I’m all for Fox. I’d like to see it on Fox. I think Fox would do a really good job, but two people have to agree,” the Republican candidate said.
“We’ll be debating her I guess, in the pretty near future. It’s going to be announced fairly soon, but we’ll be debating her.”
He had earlier backed out of a debate hosted by America’s ABC News on September 10 that had been arranged when US President Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate, before he dropped out in the wake of his disastrous performance in their first head-to-head contest.
WALZ REJECTS PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS
In Mr Walz’s final vetting interview with Ms Harris, which swayed her to choose him as her running mate, he told her that he did not aspire to become the US president.
“If I have to run through a brick wall, if I have to do the hard things … I’m willing to do it because I’m not angling for anything else,” he said, according to Politico.
“I’m at the end of my career. This is not about me. This is about America’s working families.”
VP ANNOUNCEMENT DRIVES DONATIONS
The Democratic campaign racked up US$42m (A$64m) in donations in the 24 hours after the Vice President unveiled the Minnesota Governor as her running mate.
It was one of the party’s best days of the campaign, although it fell behind the US$132m (A$201m) raised in the 48 hours after Mr Biden abandoned his bid for a second term and propelled Ms Harris to the top of the ticket.
- with AFP
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