In a speech on Thursday from a Washington, D.C., auditorium, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned that President Donald Trump is working to undermine the upcoming election, an effort that Sanders said voters must resoundingly reject.

“As someone who is strongly supporting Joe Biden,” Sanders said, “let’s be clear: A landslide victory for Biden will make it virtually impossible for Trump to deny the results and is our best means for defending democracy.”

Sanders’ 30-minute speech — “his first in-person appearance related to the election since before he dropped out of the presidential race” in April, per the New York Times — came a day after Trump refused to agree to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the November 3 election.

“We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said on Wednesday in response to a reporter’s question. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. We want to get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”

Trump has long complained of voter fraud, even disputing the results of the 2016 election — which he won — because he lost the popular vote by 3 million ballots. And this year, with more people than ever expected to vote by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly sought to poison the well with claims that people will vote twice or foreign adversaries will send in counterfeit ballots.

At last month's Republican National Convention, the president went as far as to say that “the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

That sentiment drew a sharp rebuke on Thursday from Sanders.

Noting that Trump is a “pathological liar” with “authoritarian tendencies,” Sanders argued that “this is an election between Donald Trump and democracy — and democracy must win.”

“Today, under Donald Trump, we have a president who has little respect for our Constitution or the rule of law,” Sanders said. “Today, that peaceful transition of power, the bedrock of American democracy, is being threatened like never before.”

Sanders delivered his speech about 40 days before the November 3 presidential election and at a particularly fraught time in Washington. The death last week of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has prompted Senate Republicans to promise to consider, and vote on, a Trump-nominated replacement in the weeks before the election.
Top Republicans have made clear that having a ninth, tie-breaking justice on the court is a priority ahead of an election that could involve legal challenges to mailed ballots.

That potential justice would need to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sits on, before a floor vote to confirm him or her. The panel met on Thursday morning, and Leahy made clear his displeasure with the party currently in power.


“Regardless of what Donald Trump wants,” Sanders concluded, “the American people will preserve democracy in our country.”