U.S National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said he is confident that President Donald Trump will accept the results of the upcoming election scheduled for November 3.
Trump has so far dodged verbally committing to a peaceful handover of power if he is voted out of office, causing many frets over the cornerstone of U.S democratic statehood.
“If he loses the election, I’m certain the president will transfer power over” O’Brien said in an interview with POLITICO, published.
The advisor, whose role is apolitical, then reverted to the Republican strategy of underscoring the fallibility of the electoral process.
“But we’ve got to make sure there’s no fraud in the election and we need to make sure it’s a free and fair election, just like we demand of other countries overseas, we need to make the demand of ourselves”.
In late September, Trump weaseled his way out of directly answering a reporter’s question on whether he would hand over the reins; instead he was lashing out at mail-in ballots as open to tampering.
In the interview that O’Brien gave to the Washington news site while eating pizza, he criticised the reporter who asked Trump the question, arguing that he had not prefaced it with the premise that the transfer would happen only if Trump lost.
The elections of the president and both houses of Congress are scheduled for November 3, but early voting and mail-in ballots have been at a record high due to the pandemic.
This sets up a scenario where results may take much longer to announce than previous elections.
Analysts have warned of a possible flipping of the result, whereby in-person voters on election day are likely to vote Republican, flaunting coronavirus fears, while the majority of mail-in ballots – that may take weeks to count due to high volume – will come from Democratic voters.
