Johnson hedges on 2024 vote results
Won’t pledge to accept presidential race winner
MADISON – U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is not pledging to accept the result of the November presidential election, leaving a door open to objecting to the certification of election results — a scenario that prompted an attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago when former President Donald Trump lost reelection.
Johnson told The Cap Times on Saturday
he could not answer whether he would accept the results of the 2024 presidential election, calling it an “impossible hypothetical.”
“We have to see exactly what happens,” Johnson said in an interview at the state Republican Party 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).”
A spokeswoman for Johnson did not immediately answer questions early Sunday about what kind of events could push Johnson to seek an investigation.
Johnson also hedged on accepting the results of the 2020 election four years ago amid heavy pressure leveled by Trump on Republicans to avenge his election loss despite a lack of evidence to support doing so.
Following the election, Johnson initially accepted Trump’s loss and said he had no plans to object to the certification in Congress. He later changed his mind and said on Jan. 6, 2021, he planned to be among about a dozen Republicans who would object to Joe Biden’s electoral victory in some states. He later changed his mind again following the attack on the U.S. Capitol that day.
Trump told the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel earlier this month he would only accept the results if “everything’s honest.”
“If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country,” Trump said.
“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results.”
He offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.
Trump said in the interview he would “let it be known” if he thought some
thing was wrong with the election.
“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said. “But no, I expect an honest election and we expect to win maybe very big.”
There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.
In 2016, Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Wisconsin in more than three decades — a victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that pushed him into the presidency.
In 2020, however, Trump lost the state to Biden by just about 21,000 votes. Even so, Trump has falsely claimed the result was wrong and a result of widespread voter fraud — a lie that has been repeatedly debunked since.
As in 2020, voters this fall will have a choice between Trump and Biden. Wisconsin is one of a handful of swing states expected to determine the outcome this fall.
On May 2, in response to Trump’s comments to the Journal Sentinel, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would accept election results without conditions.
“Like President Biden has previously committed, he will accept the will of the American people,” Jean-Pierre said. “That is a commitment from the president.”