Biden pledges to accept election results, after Trump wouldn't commit without conditions

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden is pledging to accept the results of the November presidential election a day after his Republican opponent refused to do so without conditions during a campaign stop in Wisconsin.

Former President Donald Trump in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday would not commit to accepting the results of Wisconsin's presidential election in November if he does not win while continuing to promote the falsehood that he won the Badger State in 2020.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden "will accept the will of the American people" when asked about Trump's comments.

"That is a commitment from the president," she said.

As in 2020, voters this fall will have a choice between Trump and Biden, who unseated Trump four years ago. Wisconsin is one of a handful of swing states expected to determine the outcome this fall.

Trump's refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state's system of elections and embrace absentee voting.

There's no evidence to support that Wisconsin's election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.

"If everything's honest, I'd gladly accept the results," Trump said Wednesday. "If it's not, you have to fight for the right of the country.

"But if everything's honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything's honest, I will absolutely accept the results," he said.

He offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election Biden said he would accept the results, even if he did not win.

After the November 2020 election, he called Trump’s refusal to concede “an embarrassment” and said it would “not help the president’s legacy,” the Washington Post reported at the time.

When asked what constitutes an honest election result, Trump said he wants "high standards of voting."

"I want people that vote to cast an honest ballot. I want the ballots to be counted honestly. I don't want people going to legislatures and getting things not approved and then doing it anyway," he said, referring to pandemic-era absentee voting policies that have since been struck down by judges and are now under debate in new legal cases.

In 2020, Trump's campaign sought to disqualify the absentee ballots of more than 238,000 voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Voters who would have been affected had cast their absentee ballots in person, known as early voting, and residents who identified themselves as "indefinitely confined," allowing them to vote absentee without meeting the state photo ID requirements.

"I want to see an honest election and I think we're going to have it this time," he said.

In 2016, Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Wisconsin in more than three decades — a victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that pushed him into the presidency.

In 2020, however, Trump lost the state to Biden by just about 21,000 votes. Even so, Trump has falsely claimed the result was wrong and a result of widespread voter fraud — a lie that has been repeatedly debunked.

On Wednesday, Trump doubled down on the falsehood of winning Wisconsin four years ago and dismissed a question about whether he accepted the results of the two recounts he paid for in Dane and Milwaukee counties showing he lost those counties.

Molly Beck, Alison Dirr and Joey Garrison can be reached at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Biden pledges to accept election results, after Trump wouldn't commit