House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) believes President Donald Trump will not leave “peacefully” if he loses the November election.
“I believe that he plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold onto office,” Clyburn told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “And that’s why the American people had better wake up.”
Clyburn’s comments that Trump will not hold “fair and unfettered elections” comes days after Trump caused bipartisan frenzy by suggesting it may be best to “delay the election.”
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” he tweeted. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
The difference between universal mail-in voting and absentee voting that Trump seems to be indicating is that voters who use absentee ballots must request them, while universal mail-in voting involves every registered voter automatically receiving a ballot they may send in.
Trump later tried to walk back his comments, saying he wasn’t actually suggesting delaying the election but was noting that it would take days “or even years” to know the real outcome of the election.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CBS that “if we try to transform this and start mailing in ballots all across the country, all 50 states, what we will see is a delay because they’re just not equipped to handle it.”
