WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was not confident about a peaceful transfer of power in the United States if Republican Donald Trump loses the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden said in an interview with CBS News when asked whether he thought there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the vote.
“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about if we lose there’d be a bloodbath,” Biden added.
During a March campaign appearance in Ohio, Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he fails win the election. At the time Trump was discussing the need to protect the U.S. auto industry from overseas competition, and Trump later said he was referring to the auto industry when he used the term.
Trump has falsely claimed he won the 2020 election against Biden and was criminally charged in Washington and Georgia with illegally trying to overturn the results.
Biden dropped out of the campaign last month after fellow Democrats called for him to step aside following a poor debate performance against Trump that raised questions about the Democratic president’s age and health.
Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, has since captured the Democratic nomination and is running against Trump.
US presidential campaigns clash in Midwest battleground state
The two U.S. presidential campaigns crossed paths Wednesday in Eau Claire, a small city of 71,000 in the crucial political battleground state of Wisconsin, which both need to win in the November election.
Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance stopped in Michigan first, then headed to neighboring Wisconsin to talk to workers at a factory. Both states are in the upper Midwest.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her new vice-presidential running mate, Tim Walz, weren’t far behind, staging a raucous outdoor rally ahead of an evening appearance in Michigan.
The two campaigns were in such proximity in Eau Claire that Vance walked over to see Vice President Harris’ Air Force Two on the local airport tarmac, quipping to reporters, “We landed about the same time that she did, and I went over there because I thought it might be nice to check out this plane that’s going to be mine in a few months.”
He also jabbed at Harris, adding, “I want to go and say hello to the journalists who are traveling along with the vice president, because I figured they must be lonely because Kamala Harris doesn’t take any questions.”
At the factory, Vance accused Harris of dodging reporters’ questions for 17 days — ever since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed Harris to take his place as the Democratic standard bearer against former President Donald Trump.
Earlier in the day, Trump, on a call to the “Fox & Friends” show, described Harris’ selection Tuesday of Walz, the liberal governor of another Midwest state, Minnesota, as a “shocking pick.”
“I could not be more thrilled,” Trump declared. Both he and Vance have characterized Walz and his policies as liberal and out of the mainstream of American politics.
Walz and Harris zeroed in on attacking Trump at their own rally, where the crowd broke into frequent chants of “Kamala” and “VP Walz.”
Harris contended that Trump, in a new four-year term starting in January, would cut protections for the country’s middle-class families, a demographic she and Walz have been heavily focusing on.
Trump, Harris argued, would cut government-run health insurance and pensions for older Americans, something he has denied he would do, while giving “tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations.”
She also attacked Trump for his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who in 2022 helped overturn the nearly five-decade-old constitutional right to an abortion in the United States. Harris said she would sign legislation to restore abortion rights throughout the U.S. if Congress passes legislation to legalize it again.
“Donald Trump intends to take our nation backward,” she said, as the crowd chanted, “Not going back.”
The highly contested states play an outsized role in determining the outcome of the election because the U.S. does not pick its president or vice president by the national popular vote.
Rather, the election is 50 state-by-state contests, with electors for the winning ticket in all but two states casting all of their votes in the Electoral College either for Harris-Walz or Trump-Vance. Electoral College votes are based on population, so the most populous states hold the most sway.
National polls now show Harris edging slightly ahead of Trump, reversing the lead he held over Biden.
But the outcome is highly in doubt.
The closeness of the race was shown by a new poll of Wisconsin voters, with the Marquette University Law School saying that, among likely voters, Harris is the choice of 50% and Trump the choice of 49%.
Wisconsin has 10 of the 270 electoral votes that are needed for victory, while more populous Michigan has 15.
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