Sen. Ron Johnson won’t commit to accepting 2024 election results if Trump loses
Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. senator said the question of whether he’ll accept the outcome of the November presidential election is an ‘impossible hypothetical.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said on May 18 that he would not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 presidential election, telling the Cap Times, “We have to see exactly what happens.”
“Yeah, that’s an impossible hypothetical to answer,” Johnson told the Madison news outlet during the Republican Party of Wisconsin’s annual convention in Appleton. “If there are all kinds of abuses, we might have to start questioning those abuses, might have to investigate them. I certainly want to [accept the results].”
Johnson’s comments echo those of former President Donald Trump, who told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 2: “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
Neither Trump nor Johnson accepts that Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won Wisconsin four years ago, when in fact there is no evidence to back up his voter fraud claims. Trump lost Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes, according to the Associated Press.
“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the Journal Sentinel on May 2. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”
Both Trump and Johnson made baseless allegations of voter fraud. Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million votes. He also lost in the Electoral College, taking 232 electoral votes to President Joe Biden’s 306.
Trump has spent the last four years lying about the outcome of the 2020 race. His lies about the election outcome were behind the violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where scores of Trump supporters broke into the building in an effort to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. More than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes in connection with their actions on Jan. 6, according to the Associated Press, of which 730 have pleaded guilty and 170 have been convicted.
Trump is himself facing felony charges connected with his efforts to overturn his loss based on the lie that the election was stolen from him.
Johnson supported Trump’s failed attempt to stay in power. He allegedly was in favor of a plan that would have had Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled Legislature ignore Biden’s victory in the state and award Wisconsin’s Electoral College votes to Trump instead. Johnson also allegedly tried to give Vice President Mike Pence an alternate slate of electors for Michigan and Wisconsin.
Biden, for his part, says he will accept the results of the election, no matter the outcome.
“Like President Biden has previously committed, he will accept the will of the American people,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 2. “That is a commitment from the president.”
