President Joe Biden made a rare appearance at a White House media briefing Friday and sought to throw dark clouds over the election, focusing on his claims of the likely response of former President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans.
“I’m confident it’ll be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” Biden said during the briefing when asked about the election, according to a White House transcript.
The appearance was the first time in his presidency Biden appeared in the briefing room, according to the New York Post.
Axios noted that as of July, Biden had done fewer media interviews and press conferences than any of the previous seven presidents through the same point in their presidencies.
Biden said he disliked Trump’s rhetoric.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out, when he didn’t like the outcome of the election, were very dangerous,” he said.
Biden also criticized Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, offering his version of Vance’s comments in this week’s debate.
“If you notice — I — I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he’d accept the outcome of the election. And they haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I’m — I’m concerned about what they’re — what they’re going to do,” Biden said.
Will the election end violently?
According to a transcript of the debate, Vance was asked if he would “again seek to challenge this year’s election results, even if every governor certifies the results?”
“Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020. And my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square. And that’s all I’ve said. And that’s all that Donald Trump has said,” Vance said.
“Remember, he said that on Jan. 6, the protesters ought to protest peacefully,” he said.
In a later part of the debate, Vance said, “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th, as we have done for 250 years in this country.”
“But we have to remember that for years in this country, Democrats protested the results of elections. Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that Donald Trump had the election stolen by Vladimir Putin because the Russians bought, like, $500,000 worth of Facebook ads,” he said.
“This has been going on for a long time. And if we want to say that we need to respect the results of the election, I’m on board. But if we want to say, as Tim Walz is saying, that this is just a problem that Republicans have had. I don’t buy that,” Vance said.
Vance replied to a question about the 2020 election on Wednesday while in Michigan, according to the Associated Press.
“The media’s obsessed with talking about the election of four years ago,” Vance said. “I’m focused on the election of 33 days from now because I want to throw Kamala Harris out of office and get back to common-sense economic policies.”
Trump responded while at a Hurricane Helene relief event in Georgia, according to the Post.
“I only can hope that it’s going to be free and fair, and I think in this state it will be, and I hope in every state it will be. And I think we’re going to do very well,” Trump said.
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