WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Friday he was not confident the US election in November would be peaceful, citing incendiary comments by Republican contender Donald Trump, who still rejects his 2020 defeat.
Biden’s warning came with lawmakers and analysts voicing concern over increasingly bellicose campaign language ahead of the vote, AFP reported.
Trump — who survived an assassination bid in July and another apparent plot in September — alleged widespread fraud after his defeat to Biden in 2020, and pro-Trump rioters riled up by his false claims ransacked the Capitol.
“I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” Biden told reporters as he discussed the election.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.”
Trump was impeached in 2021 for inciting the insurrection after hundreds of his supporters — exhorted by the defeated Republican to “fight like hell” — battered police as they smashed windows at the Capitol and broke through doors.
He has been indicted over what prosecutors allege was a “private criminal effort” to subvert the election that culminated in the violence.
“When all else had failed,” the indictment reads, Trump directed an “angry crowd” to disrupt the certification of the vote.
Trump — who is due to return to the venue of his first assassination bid in Butler, Pennsylvania this weekend — has long been assailed over his violent rhetoric.
Biden joined the criticism during the first appearance of his presidency in the White House briefing room to tout the Democrats’ economic achievements as his vice president Kamala Harris prepares to take on Trump.
Trump was due to campaign Friday in Georgia, a swing state narrowly claimed by Biden four years ago but won by Trump in 2016 — and one of the biggest prizes of the 2024 election map.
