WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton said in a new interview that Joe Biden should not concede the 2020 presidential election “under any circumstances," anticipating issues that could prolong knowing the final outcome.
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.
The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee predicted that among several scenarios, Republicans are going to try to “mess up absentee balloting” so that they could get a potentially narrow advantage in the Electoral College.
“We've got to have a massive legal operation, I know the Biden campaign is working on that,” she said. “We have to have poll workers, and I urge people, who are able, to be a poll worker. We have to have our own teams of people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are going to put outside polling places. This is a big organizational challenge, but at least we know more about what they're going to do.”
Clinton said she thinks that the only way Trump could win re-election is “by either suppressing or stopping voting, or outright intimidating people into feeling that they have to go with the strong guy to stand up against all these threats that Trump is going to gin up to scare people.”
She also suggested that Biden should be more aggressive in his fight against Trump.
“I loved hearing Joe Biden talking about bringing people together and leading us into the light,” she said about the former vice president’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last week. “But, you know, it's a battle and fear is really powerful.”
Trump, for his part, has been saying for months that massive fraud will occur in the election because of widespread mail-in voting, which Democrats are pushing for to expand access to ballots during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ahead of the second night of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, Trump tweeted, “80 Million Unsolicited Ballots are impossible for election centers to tabulate accurately. The Democrats know this better than anyone else. The fraud and abuse will be an embarrassment to our Country. Hopefully the Courts will stop this scam!”
