Graham: If Trump concedes election, Republicans will ‘never’ elect another president

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned that President Trump should not concede defeat in the 2020 presidential election in part because Republicans will “never” be able to elect another president from their party again. 

“If Republicans don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” Graham said Sunday on Fox News. “President Trump should not concede. We’re down to less — 10,000 votes in Georgia. He’s going to win North Carolina. We have gone from 93,000 votes to less than 20,000 votes in Arizona, where more — more votes to be counted.” 

Every major news network and The Associated Press on Saturday projected Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 race for the White House. Trump has said he will not concede, alleging widespread voter fraud led to tens of thousands of illegal ballots being cast against him. 

The Trump campaign has provided no evidence to back up the president’s claims. 

Biden, in a victory speech on Saturday evening, promised to work as hard for Americans who voted against him as those who voted for him. 

Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, won reelection in a tightly contested race of his own, the most expensive in U.S. Senate history. 

“What happened? The Trump team has canvassed all early voters and absentee mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, and they have found over 100 people they think were dead but 15 people that we verified that have been dead who voted,” Graham alleged. “Here is the one that gets me: Six people registered after they died and voted. In Pennsylvania, I guess you’re never out of it.” 

Other Republicans in Congress have suggested Trump should give up and let the Republican Party enter its next chapter.  

“I think people are saying that conservative principles still account for the majority of public opinion in our country,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said on Sunday. 

The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several key battleground states that Biden won asking local judges to either invalidate or stop counting mail-in ballots, a record number of which were cast in this year’s election due to the coronavirus pandemic.