Trump would not rule out the possibility of political violence this election season if he loses.
He said in an interview with Time: “It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
Trump also reiterated the possibility of pardoning the more than 800 convicted rioters at the Capitol.
Former President Donald Trump said in a new interview that he has not ruled out the possibility of election-related violence if he loses to President Joe Biden in November.
Time published a lengthy interview with the former president on Tuesday, conducted primarily on April 12 at his Mar-a-Lago club. The conversation focused on his ambitions if he won a second term, such as mass deportations, eliminating “bad people” in government, and how he might fire his attorney general if the head of law enforcement refused to prosecute anyone under his command.
Asked for the first time about the prospect of “political violence” in the upcoming presidential election, Trump said he didn’t think it would happen.
“I think we’re going to have a big victory,” he said. “And I think there won’t be any violence.”
Two weeks later, Trump spoke with the Time reporter for a follow-up, and the reporter asked specifically whether violence might erupt if he did not defeat Biden.
“I think we’re going to win,” he said. “And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
Trump added that he would “absolutely” consider pardoning each of the more than 800 rioters convicted on January 6, 2021, an idea he has previously floated.
“If someone was mean and mean, I would look at things differently,” he said.
In the years since the Capitol riot, the threat of political and electoral violence does not appear to have diminished.
A poll last year by the American Association of Former Members of Congress and the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that 84% of ex-members of Congress were worried about election-related violence in 2024. In total, 94% of Democrats said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the threat, compared to 74% of Republicans.
Former Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked while defending the Capitol on January 6, told Business Insider in February that he was certain election-related violence would return this year, adding that she “never stopped after January 6.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
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