Former President Donald Trump said during CNN’s presidential debate that he would accept the results of the 2024 race in November if it was a “fair, legal, proper election,” before repeating a discredited allegation of voter fraud when he lost four years ago.
CNN debate moderator Dana Bash asked Trump three times whether he would accept the 2024 election results. The first two times he didn’t answer the question directly, but on her third attempt, Trump said, in part, “If it’s a fair, legal, good election, absolutely.”
“I would have preferred to accept them, but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous – and if you want, we’ll have a press conference about it in a week, or we’ll have another conference like that in a week,” Trump said, referring to another debate with President Joe Biden.
Trump has not provided more specific criteria that would lead him to accept the results.
Trump has refused to publicly acknowledge that he lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden. Trump has made repeated and baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, and virtually all of the dozens of lawsuits filed by his campaign and his allies have been dismissed or dropped.
Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of a rigged election result and his response to his 2020 defeat have raised concerns about how he would respond to another defeat.
He was also pressed about his actions on January 6, 2021, the day some of his supporters stormed the US Capitol. He did not directly condemn the violence or apologize for his rhetoric in the days leading up to the riots.
“On January 6th, we were respected all over the world, we were respected all over the world,” Trump said. Then, referring to Biden, he added: “Then he came in and we were laughed at.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
