Former president Donald Trump has repeatedly and baselessly refused to admit defeat from the 2020 elections, claiming that contest was stolen from him. Now, with less than two weeks until the 2024 race Vice President Kamala Harris' team is preparing for the scenario that he calls a premature victory.
In an interview with NBC News' Hallie Jackson on Tuesday, the Vice President and Democratic nominee went into detail about the possibility of the former president trying to subvert the election, despite being primarily focused on beating him first.
Harris said the party has "the resources and expertise" should this come into reality.
"This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the— a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and some 140 law enforcement officers were attacked. Some— were killed. This is a very serious matter," she said from her official residence in the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
"The American people are, at this point, two weeks out, being presented with a very, very serious decision about what will be the future of our country," Harris added.
The Vice President also discussed her gender, which she has largely stayed away from during the campaign. She says she's not focused on pointing out the historic nature of her candidacy, saying, "I'm clearly a woman, I don't need to point that out to anyone."
She added that she's not worried about sexism harming her candidacy, saying she's focused on speaking to all voters.
"I will never assume that anyone in our country should elect a leader based on their gender or their race, instead that that leader needs to earn the vote based on substance and what they will do to address challenges and to inspire people," she said.
Trump has been criminally charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election, and refuses to admit he lost to President Joe Biden, The Associated Press reports. After a failed legal effort to overturn the results, a mob of Trump supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021, attacking law enforcement in an effort to stop the certification of the race.
Those claims have spilled onto the 2024 cycle, predicting that if he loses this year, it is because the election was rigged.
"They cheat. That's all they want to do is cheat. And when you see this, it's the only way they're gonna win," Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin on Oct. 6. "And we can't let that happen and we can't let it happen again. We're going to have no country."
Trump has also claimed that Democrats are bringing migrants to vote for them in the elections.
"Our elections are bad," Trump said during the ABC News presidential debate in September. "And a lot of these illegal immigrants are coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that's why they're allowing them to come into our country."
The Brennan Center, following the 2016 general election, found noncitizen voting to be virtually nonexistent. The center reported that election officials who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions only estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution, which is equivalent to 0.0001%.
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