The US polls: If Trump loses, there will be “bloodbath,” says President Biden
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Not confident of a peaceful transfer of power if Vice-President Kamala Harris defeats Republican nominee Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden has said there will be a “bloodbath.”
While campaigning earlier this year, he regularly brought up the fact that Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after he (Biden) beat him in the 2020 presidential election.
The incumbent US President also frequently quoted his predecessor Donald Trump as saying there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost — although the Republican said he was talking in the context of electric car imports from China.
Biden warned that he was “not confident at all” of a peaceful handover of power to Kamala Harris if Donald Trump loses November’s election, according to an extract of a CBS interview broadcast Wednesday.
The 81-year-old Biden, who dropped out of the White House race in July and endorsed Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee, said Trump’s hints on the campaign trail about not accepting a defeat should be taken seriously.
“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden told the US network in the interview, which was due to air fully on Sunday when asked if he believed there would be a calm transfer in January 2025.
“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it — all the stuff about ‘if we lose there’ll be a bloodbath,” he added.
Trump has, however, maintained his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and in the CBS interview Biden accused the former president of trying to install allies in key electoral positions in US states to manipulate counts if the same thing happened again.
“You can’t love your country only when you win,” said Biden.
The aging president has long framed Trump as a threat to US democracy.
