In interview, Trump doesn't commit to accepting Wisconsin election results if he loses

WAUKESHA – Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday didn't commit to accepting the results of Wisconsin's presidential election in November if he does not win and again promoted the falsehood that he won the Badger State in 2020.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the former president said he would accept the results of the November election showing he lost "if everything's honest."

"If everything's honest, I'd gladly accept the results," Trump said in an interview 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.

Trump said Wednesday he would "let it be known" if he thought something was wrong with the election.

"I'd be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise," he said. "But no, I expect an honest election and we expect to win maybe very big."

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

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would accept election results without conditions.

"Like President Biden has previously committed, he will accept the will of the American people," Jean-Pierre said Thursday when asked about Trump's comments. "That is a commitment from the president."

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.

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 since.

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.

"If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin," Trump said. "It also showed I won the election in other locations."

Joey Garrison of USA Today contributed to this report.

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

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trump doesn't commit to accepting Wisconsin election results