Democrats have damaged trust in the ballot, and both parties will challenge the 2024 outcome, the lawmaker has predicted
FILE PHOTO: US Senator Marco Rubio. © Saul Martinez / Getty Images
US Senator Marco Rubio has said he won’t preemptively accept the outcome of the November presidential election, saying that if it’s unfair, the Republicans will go to court.
The Florida lawmaker said during a NBC ‘Meet the Press’ interview on Sunday that he would “do virtually anything to ensure that Donald Trump wins and that Joe Biden does not” in November, because “we cannot afford as a nation to have another four years like the last three and a half.” Trump has claimed on many occasions that the Democrats “stole” the 2020 election from him.
During the interview, NBC News host Kristen Welker asked the Republican whether he would accept the election results this year “no matter what happens.”
“No matter what happens?” Rubio responded. “No. If it’s an unfair election, I think it is going to be contested by either side.”
The host explained that what she meant to say was “no matter who wins.” Rubio claimed that senior members of the Democratic party have been “opposing every Republican victory since 2000.”
WATCH: Will you accept the results of the 2024 no matter who wins? @kwelkernbc asks.@SenMarcoRubio (R-Fla): "No matter what happens? No, if it's an unfair election."Welker: "Senator, no matter who wins."Rubio: "I think you're asking the wrong person." pic.twitter.com/OnuiovsKDs
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 19, 2024
As an example, he cited Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016. In 2019, she declared him an “illegitimate president” who, she alleged, “knows” that he stole her victory. Biden on his campaign trail in 2020 said he “absolutely” agreed with the notion that Trump was an illegitimate president. Welker defended Clinton by saying that unlike Trump, she formally conceded her defeat.
Rubio went on the rhetorical offensive, bringing up a more recent example of what he perceives as a pro-Democratic political bias in the US – the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.
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When the story of how the president’s son forgot his computer (which was allegedly full of compromising material), was first reported by the New York Post in October 2020, US social media collaborated to throttle its dissemination online. Tech giants justified the move by citing a need to fight election disinformation, with some later acknowledging they’d made a bad call.
Meanwhile, news outlets endorsed an assessment by former US intelligence officials that the emergence of the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Some prominent publications misreported the claim as ex-officers confirming that the laptop’s content had been planted by Moscow.
”What undermines elections is when NBC News and every major news outlet in America censored the Biden laptop story, which turned out to be true, not Russian misinformation,” Rubio argued.
The senator made it clear that he supports challenging whatever irregularities may be detected during the electoral process via the US court system.
