YOUR PARANOID QUESTIONS

All Your Most Paranoid Transfer of Power Questions, Answered

What happens if Donald Trump refuses to accept the results of the election?

Ben Jacobs
GEN
Published in
6 min readJul 24, 2020

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Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Can Donald Trump continue as president even if he loses the election in November? Trump’s refusal to say that he would accept the results of the election during an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News comes as the president continues to fearmonger about the use of vote by mail in the 2020 election and raise questions about its legitimacy.

This rhetoric is not new from Trump. He falsely claimed in 2016 that Ted Cruz “stole” the Iowa caucuses and refused to commit in advance to accepting the result of the general election against Hillary Clinton. Now that he’s in the White House, can Trump thwart the will of the American electorate if he loses in November? Let’s look at what’s actually possible — and what isn’t.

Can Trump do anything if it’s a Biden landslide?

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Ben Jacobs
GEN
Writer for

Ben Jacobs is a politics reporter based in Washington. Follow him on Twitter at @bencjacobs.