President Trump refused to rule out the possibility of skipping his successor’s inauguration in January during an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News.
Speaking with “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade, the president would not answer when asked directly by Kilmeade whether he would attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next month.
“So would you show up at the inauguration?” Kilmeade asked.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump responded.
“I want to talk about this. We’ve done a great job. I got more votes than any president in the history of our country. In the history of our country, right? Not even close — 75 million far more than Obama, far more than anybody. And they say we lost an election. We didn’t lose. If I got 10 million fewer votes, they say I couldn’t have lost,” Trump added, repeating baseless claims revolving around election fraud and the 2020 race.
When asked if he was worried about what would happen if he had not conceded by the time Biden’s inauguration occurred, Trump said that he believed Biden would be an “illegitimate” president.
“I worry about the country having an illegitimate president. That’s what I worry about,” Trump said. “A president that lost and lost badly. This wasn’t like a close election. You look at Georgia. We won Georgia big. We won Pennsylvania big. We won Wisconsin big. We won it big.”
His remarks come following two defeats at the Supreme Court this week, one involving a case brought in Pennsylvania in the hopes of overturning that state’s results and another brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), who sought unsuccessfully to invalidate the results in four battleground states Biden won.
The president’s continued refusal to concede also takes place just days before the members of the Electoral College are set to officially certify his defeat, an event that will be marked by a prime-time address from Biden.