Abrams rejects Trump comparisons over refusal to concede

Stacey Abrams rejected comparisons that she and President Trump are both “two sides of the same coin” when it comes to their refusals to concede in their elections, saying they’re not “even the same currency.”

Abrams made the comments during a fundraiser with cast members of CW’s “Supernatural” on Tuesday night, shortly after discussing her decision not to concede to then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R) after he was projected the winner of the state’s gubernatorial race in 2018.

{mosads}Abrams said her refusal to concede in the 2018 race and Trump’s current refusal to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory are completely different because Trump has had no evidence to back his claims.

“Voter fraud is this myth and if you don’t believe it, Donald Trump has now lost 51 cases in conservative courts, in liberal courts, in the Supreme Court. Nobody can prove it because it doesn’t exist,” Abrams said. “But what they’re using the specter for voter fraud to do is to scare people out of believing that they need to fix voter suppression.”

“And that’s what’s so dangerous about what Donald Trump is doing,” she continued. “The Wall Street Journal tried to compare me to Donald Trump and say we’re both two sides of the same coin. We’re not even the same currency.”

“My goal is to make certain that everyone who wants to vote and is legally eligible to vote can cast a vote. He’s arguing that the wrong people got to vote and that’s why he lost,” she continued.

The Hill reached out to Abrams for comment to clarify which Wall Street Journal piece she was referring to.

Her remarks come two days after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) penned an opinion piece for the Journal accusing Abrams of “establishing a playbook” he said Trump “is following to the letter” when she refused to concede in the 2018 race.

“The crisis America’s elections face is not one of security, but one of confidence,” he wrote.

“The roots of this crisis stretch back long before the 2020 election. Confidence has been undermined by politicians and pundits who tacitly or explicitly refuse to acknowledge their losses and receive a megaphone from sympathetic media outlets,” Raffensperger wrote, citing Abram and Kemp’s race as his example.

Raffensperger has criticized Trump’s comments claiming victory in Georgia. 

Abrams during the fundraiser pointed to concerns Democrats had expressed over voter suppression in the months leading up to her 2018 race in Georgia, noting the “thousands of calls” she said her team received from voters “complaining about why they couldn’t vote” at the time.

She also reiterated concerns about her opponent’s handling of elections in Georgia in the past, which Kemp has previously pushed back on, saying Kemp “got to be the umpire, the scorekeeper and the guy at bat” when serving as secretary of state before becoming governor.

“On election night, I said I don’t know if I’m going to win or lose, but we’re going to fight to make sure every vote gets counted,” she said. “And we proceeded to file lawsuits, as did a number of allied organizations, and tens of thousands of people got their votes counted despite the intentions otherwise. But it wasn’t enough.”

Days after the election, Abrams filed a lawsuit that aimed to block two counties in her state from throwing out absentee ballots that contained minor mistakes. However, she also maintained later that month that she was not trying to change election results but wanted to address voting rights issues. She had also acknowledged her defeat in the race 10 days after the election.

“So, I didn’t fight to make myself governor. I didn’t file a single lawsuit to change the vote,” she said, saying she “instead filed a lawsuit to fix the system because if this becomes all about politicians, no one’s going to care.”