A lot is being made over whether or not the election results will be accepted if Donald Trump loses. A lot of Trump supporters, and even Trump and JD Vance themselves, have been asked this. The reason being that many people still have trouble accepting the results of the 2020 election based on a lot of unanswered questions and odd circumstances.
As such, Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters alike have been accused of being "election deniers," a supposedly grave sin against the United States of America, which is funny to hear from Democrats, seeing as how denialism made up quite a bit of the foundational beef against Trump when he won in 2016.
Tucker Carlson recently addressed this on the Jesse Kelly show on "The First."
"What do I think about this election, specifically?" Carlson said. "I think Trump's going to win, and I think if they tell me on November 6 that he didn't win, that Kamala Harris won because she's a historic black lady, or whatever, and that she got 85 million votes because people love her, they're going to have to prove to me that's true."
"I'm not going to accept that at face value," he continued.
"Why would I? They've lied consistently for decades. We now know that. They're liars. They'll say anything to win. They will kill people to win. They allowed Trump to get shot in order to keep control. That's a fact, and so, it's not going to be as simple as saying to me, 'No, no, no, she's more popular than we ever imagined she was. There was just a groundswell of support for Kamala Harris because she's so enlightened and great and competent.' Like, you're going to have to show me how that happened."
Carlson said that he is an equity owner in this country and not an employee, saying that he needs to be shown the books and that this is an entirely fair thing to ask.
"It's not that I won't accept the outcome. It's that I won't accept fraud," Carlson said.
Kelly made the point that we aren't peasants, and that ordering us to just accept something without proof isn't something we should do.
"They will say anything to win. They will kill people to win." @TuckerCarlson believes Donald Trump will win the election and he won't accept a Kamala Harris victory at face value.
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) October 29, 2024
"It's not that I won't accept the outcome. It's that I won't accept fraud." pic.twitter.com/RHN5ikTFJP
Carlson's take isn't an unreasonable one. Accepting election results, even if they don't come out the way you wanted, is a civilized way to go about things. However, so is asking for proof that everything was done on the up and up. We cannot be commanded to just accept things on faith. That's not the way this country operates.
Even if the Democrats didn't do anything to illegally sway or defraud the election in their favor back in 2020, the idea that we shouldn't be questioning election results in the face of unanswered questions and odd occurrences isn't something they should be doing anyway. For a people who supposedly care so much about democracy, the attitude of criticizing and mocking anyone who asks questions about the results isn't very democratic.
Moreover, fraud should be, at its core, unacceptable. If a vote is proven fraudulent in any way, it should be tossed out and discounted. Period. Full stop.
If you are not an American citizen, your vote doesn't count. If your name appears on a ballot despite the fact that you've been dead for a while, your vote doesn't count. If you show up to a voting location and you don't have a state-issued ID, you don't get to vote.
These aren't huge asks.
There shouldn't even be an argument about any of this, but there is, and if you're trying to argue that elections shouldn't be safer, then you can't get mad when people smell fraud and refuse to accept the results. It's just logic.