By Talia Kaplan | Fox News
Crenshaw says Democrats are building a tale that if Trump gets reelected, ‘it will be illegitimate’.
The fact that Hillary Clinton urged Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to not concede defeat on the night of the Nov. 3 election, no matter the circumstances, is “eerie,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, said on Wednesday.
Crenshaw, who will be addressing the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, also told “Fox & Friends” that Clinton’s warning to the former vice president further proves that Democrats are building the narrative that if President Trump gets reelected in November, “it will be illegitimate.”
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances,” Clinton said in an interview on Showtime’s “The Circus,” which was partly released Tuesday. “Because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually, I do believe he will win, if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is.”
Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, lost the presidential election four years ago to President Trump. An aggregate of polls by RealClearPolitics shows Biden leading Trump, a Republican, by more than 7 percentage points nationally.
But Clinton suggested the election will be “close,” accusing Republicans of trying to tamper with the results by “messing up absentee balloting” to secure a narrow advantage in the Electoral College.
“We’ve got to have a massive legal operation,” Clinton, a former secretary of state under then-President Barack Obama, said. “And I know the Biden campaign is working on that.”
“How bold she is with just laying out their plan like that. And we all know that’s the plan, right? Create as much chaos around elections as possible,” Crenshaw said on Wednesday, reacting to Clinton’s comments.
He went on to say that people should find it “very suspicious” that “Democrats don’t want any regulation” on “our institution of voting.”
Crenshaw went on to explain that Democrats have “built a narrative: don’t concede, universal mail-in ballots, no voter I.D.”
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“They’ve started to build a narrative that if Donald Trump gets elected it will be illegitimate, and now they’re laying out their plan,” he continued.
Millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail this November due to the coronavirus pandemic, increasing the chances the winner of the presidential race won’t immediately be known on election night. State election officials in several key battleground states have warned it could take days to count the votes, given the influx of absentee and mail-in ballots they expect to receive.
The result has been a partisan battle over voting by mail, exacerbated by fears among some Democrats over operational changes implemented at the U.S. Postal Service by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a longtime Republican fundraiser.
DeJoy approved changes to the agency aimed at cutting costs, including prohibiting overtime, shutting down sorting machines early and requiring carriers to leave mail behind when necessary to avoid extra trips or late delivery on routes. But he’s since reversed course, saying the changes to the Postal Service will be suspended until after the November election.
Democratic leaders have accused the White House of trying to hamper mail delivery and suppress votes.
“If we’re all being honest and got a bunch of problem solvers in a room and say, ‘We want an election that is verifiable and secure so we all know that our vote counts,’ obvious elements of that is in-person voting and voter I.D.,” Crenshaw said on Wednesday. “Everybody would agree on those common-sense elements so you should find it very suspicious that these are the things that Democrats fight against the most.”
He then asked, “Why is that?”
“It’s very, very strange and it’s because they want to create chaos in the elections,” Crenshaw said. “They want to be able to tinker with the chaos and claim victory even when they didn’t win.”
Trump has repeatedly raised concerns of fraud involving mail-in voting, a fear that he reignited on Monday during the first night of the Republican National Convention.
Fox News’ Megan Henney contributed to this report.
