AFP :
President Joe Biden said Wednesday he is “not confident” Donald Trump would concede peacefully if he loses the US election, as the Republican’s rival Kamala Harris warned a Trump victory would usher in a lawless administration set on curtailing Americans’ freedoms.
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.
“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden told US network CBS after he was asked if he expected a peaceful transfer of power in 2025.
“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously,” Biden warned. “He means it.”
The president’s remarks, which air fully on Sunday, came soon after Harris had sounded the alarm over Trump’s conduct in the opposite scenario – victory for the 78-year-old billionaire.
Speaking to a crowd in Eau Claire, Wisconsin as part of a multi-day tour of swing states, she used the former president’s own words – as well as his felony convictions – to argue that a second Trump term would be a disaster for America.
She pointed to his vow to be a dictator “on day one,” his threats to weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies and his 2022 comment demanding the “termination” of constitutional provisions over his 2020 election defeat.
“Someone who suggests that we should terminate the constitution of the United States should never again have a chance to stand behind the seal of the president of the United States,” Harris said, exhorting Americans to reject the “chaos, fear and hate” of Trumpism.
Harris reprised the theme hours later at a rally in Detroit, where she called herself and her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, “joyful warriors” in the White House battle.
The 59-year-old vice president was on day two of a blitz of the most closely-fought election battlegrounds as she seeks to capitalize on a surging excitement since she replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket in July.
Harris and Walz will take their double act to further stops through Saturday in racially diverse “Sun Belt” states Arizona and Nevada.
‘Far worse’
In Wisconsin and Michigan, they sketched out a vision of future prosperity for the middle class, repeatedly speaking of their national pride and making a virtue of the patriotism more associated with Republican rhetoric in the pre-Trump era.