Like many other Americans, Governor Andrew Cuomo had plenty to say about Tuesday night’s trainwreck of a presidential debate — and Donald Trump’s continued disparaging of the election process.
Calling it “the most disrespectful, chaotic debate,” Cuomo told reporters at a Wednesday conference call that it also proved to be the most frightening because of Trump’s statements about accepting (or not) the results of the Nov. 3 election between him and former Vice President Joe Biden.
As he has done repeatedly, Trump again attempted to cast baseless doubts about the integrity of mail-in voting during the Sept. 29 forum with Biden — even as the former vice president pointed out that Trump himself would be filling out a mail-in ballot.
Millions of Americans are expected to mail in ballots during this election due to the COVID-19 pandemic; mail-in voting has occurred for years in other states without any widespread voter fraud. Yet that didn’t stop Trump from stating Tuesday that he “can’t go along” with the results of this election and claiming, without any substantial evidence, there would be “fraud like you never seen.”
That led Cuomo to conclude that Trump is deliberately working to discredit an election that he is likely to lose.
“If you believe you were going to win the election, why would you be discrediting the election?” Cuomo asked. “Why would you discredit it if you thought you were going to win? You would be saying the opposite.”
The governor charged that Trump’s remarks also projected what the president intends to do if he loses — launch an array of legal challenges that wind up with a potentially conservative-leaning Supreme Court helping Trump retain his power.
“That is a person who thinks he is going to lose the election, and he’s not going to celebrate on Election Night, and he’s going to prolong it with allegations of fraud,” Cuomo said, adding that Trump would provoke a “Constitutional crisis” if he fails to leave should he lose the upcoming election.
“There is no way a person discredits an election if they believe they’re going to win,” Cuomo concluded.
