House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on the top GOP leaders in the House and Senate to denounce Donald Trump for sowing doubt as to whether he’ll accept the presidential election results.
During the final presidential debate on Wednesday, the Republican nominee said he would keep the country “in suspense” and “will look at it at the time” on Election Day to decide whether he’d honor the outcome. At a rally Thursday afternoon, Trump said he’d “totally accept” the results — “if I win.”
In a statement on Thursday, Pelosi said the silence from Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) amounted to “complicity.”
{mosads}”Never before in our history has a major party candidate refused to accept the results of an election. The deafening silence of Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell only worsens the lasting damage that will be caused by this unprecedented assault on our values as a nation,” Pelosi said.
“Speaker Ryan and Senator McConnell must make it unequivocally clear that they reject Trump’s horrifying attack on our elections.”
Ryan’s office on Thursday pointed to a statement made by spokeswoman AshLee Strong over the weekend, which reads, “our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.” The Speaker offered no response to Trump’s most recent remarks.
McConnell has yet to respond either to Trump’s comments during the debate and rally. He didn’t issue a response like Ryan’s when Trump claimed the election is “rigged” against him in the preceding days.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also said in a statement after the debate that “every Republican leader must immediately join Democrats in denouncing Trump’s utter contempt for our democracy.”
Both of the top GOP congressional leaders have sought to avoid commenting on Trump in the final weeks of the election. Ryan has been trying to ignore Trump after announcing last week he’d no longer try to defend him.