(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump refused to unconditionally accept the results of the upcoming 2024 presidential election in an interview Wednesday with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“If everything is honest, I will gladly accept the results. I don’t change that,” Trump said in the interview. “If not, we must fight for the rights of the country.”
Trump also repeated false claims that he won the state of Wisconsin during the 2020 election. “If you go back and look at all the things that were discovered, it shows that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the Journal Sentinel. “It also showed that I won elections in other places.”
President Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020, leading by about 21,000 votes, a victory of about 0.6 percentage points.
Trump repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was rigged or “stolen,” despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Special prosecutor Jack Smith indicted the former president last year, alleging that Trump violated several laws in his attempts to overturn the election. Trump denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.
Throughout his political career, Trump has regularly refused to accept the results of an election or commit to admitting defeat. After finishing second in the Iowa caucuses in 2016, Trump accused Texas Sen. Ted Cruz of fraud and called a new race. Later, while facing Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump baselessly claimed that the election she ultimately won was “rigged” and repeatedly refused to say whether she would abide by the result. He has again avoided a commitment ahead of the 2024 elections.
The presumptive Republican nominee joined House Speaker Mike Johnson at a news conference earlier this month to, in part, “draw attention to” what they say are state proposals and demands that would allow voters to vote. noncitizens, CNN previously reported.
Currently, federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Noncitizens who vote illegally risk fines and face up to a year in prison and deportation. Trump, however, repeatedly made false claims that Democrats want undocumented immigrants to enter the country to impact the election, attempting to stoke fear around immigration and election security ahead of the November election.
Trump returned to the campaign trail Wednesday for the first time since his criminal trial in New York began in earnest last month. The presumptive Republican nominee spent the day hosting rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan, two critical states that he won in 2016 but that he lost to Biden in 2020.
CNN’s Alayna Treene, Kristen Holmes, Kate Sullivan, Steve Contorno and Alison Main contributed to this report.
