Donald Trump was on his way to his best performance in a presidential debate Wednesday night ― right up to the moment when he refused, twice, to say he would respect the results of November’s presidential election.
It overshadowed everything else that happened on the stage in Las Vegas and arguably told voters everything they need to know about the Republican nominee for president.
Trump’s answer shouldn’t have surprised anybody. For the last two weeks or so, Trump has been going on and on about “rigged” elections, riling up his supporters by warning that Hillary Clinton and her allies were trying to steal the election.
The argument has drawn widespread condemnation, even from fellow Republicans ― partly because his warnings of ballot stuffing in heavily minority cities have such obvious racial overtones, and partly because his pre-emptive questioning of the election results is way outside of the norms of American politics.
Election officials, many of them Republicans, have said Trump’s claims lack factual basis ― that, notwithstanding isolated cases of wrongdoing, there’s no evidence of widespread fraud. And Trump’s own advisers have tried repeatedly to downplay the statements by arguing that Trump was really just talking about media bias.
But Trump hasn’t backed off. Just two days ago, for example, Trump tweeted out that he was worried about media bias and election fraud.
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