Biden says military will escort Trump from White House if he loses and refuses to leave

Former Vice President Joe Biden said late Wednesday that he’s “absolutely convinced” the military would escort President Trump from the White House if the presumptive Democratic nominee wins the general election in November. 

Biden was asked on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” whether he’s thought about the possibility of Trump refusing to leave office. 

“Yes, I have,” Biden said. 

He went on to list a number of former high-ranking military officials who have spoken out about Trump’s actions in response to protests that swept the nation following the police killing of George Floyd. Biden cited those remarks as proof that the military would intervene if Trump did not accept the election results. 

“I promise, I am absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch,” the former vice president said. 

Biden alleged at a separate point in the interview that Trump would attempt to “steal” the election later this year, arguing that the president’s opposition to mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic is part of an effort to suppress voting rights. 

“It’s my greatest concern. My single greatest concern,” Biden said. “This president is going to try to steal this election. This is a guy who said that all mail-in ballots are fraudulent.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed Biden’s comments on Thursday, calling the idea that the military would have to remove Trump from office a “ridiculous proposition.”

“This president is looking forward to November. This president is hard at work for the American people,” she said on Fox News. “And leave it to Democrats to grandstand and level these conspiracy theories.”

Trump’s campaign also panned the remarks, calling them “another brainless conspiracy theory from Joe Biden as he continues to try to undermine confidence in our elections.”

“It was the Obama Administration that tried to subvert an election by spying on the Trump campaign in 2016 and Biden himself was part of the effort to sabotage the incoming Trump Administration because they couldn’t live with President Trump’s victory,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh asserted.

“President Trump has been clear that he will accept the results of the 2020 election,” the spokesman added.

Biden’s comments came just a day after primary elections in Georgia were marred by excessively long lines stretching outside polling locations and problems with voting machines. The lines prompted alarm from officials concerned about how such problems could affect November’s presidential election. 

Biden said that his campaign is putting together an initiative to make sure lawyers are in districts across the U.S. to help “control” election-related problems. 

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, some states have worked to expand vote-by-mail options to avoid crowding at polling sites. But Trump has vehemently denounced the efforts, claiming that they put Republicans at a disadvantage and increase the chance of fraud. 

He threatened to withhold funding from Michigan and Nevada in late May over plans in those states to allow more voting to be conducted by mail. Federal Elections Commissioner Ellen Weintraub has said there’s “no basis” for Trump’s claims that vote-by-mail leads to fraud.

A slate of recent polls show Biden with a solid lead over Trump in his campaign for the White House. A national survey released by CNN on Monday showed Biden with a 14-point advantage over the president. The findings prompted the Trump campaign to demand that CNN retract the poll and apologize. 

The news network said, however, that it stands by the results. 

“To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40 year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results,” wrote CNN general counsel David Vigilante in a letter to the campaign. 

— Updated at 1:51 p.m.