Donald Trump was facing a backlash Thursday after declining to pledge he will accept the results of the 2024 presidential election if he loses, as he repeated his false claims that he was cheated in the 2020 vote.
"If everything's honest, I'd gladly accept the results," the Republican former president told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday. "If it's not, you have to fight for the right of the country."
Trump -- who is running for a return to the White House, in what will almost certainly be a re-run of his 2020 face-off with Joe Biden -- made similar remarks ahead of the last two presidential elections.
He told the Sentinel he would "let it be known" if he thought there were problems.
"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."
Trump equivocated when asked recently by Time Magazine if his defeat in November would spark political violence, and his latest remarks prompted a withering response from the Biden camp.
"Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the constitution and a threat to our democracy," campaign spokesman James Singer said in a statement.
"The American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge."
Trump is facing dozens of felony charges over an alleged criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election -- culminating in the storming of the US Capitol by his supporters -- that was based on his false claims of voter fraud.
The former president continues to make baseless claims that the White House was stolen from him in 2020, repeatedly and falsely alleging at two rallies as recently as Wednesday that Democrats had committed widespread voter fraud.
"The radical left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020 and we're not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024. We won't have a country left," Trump thundered in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
