Following Biden’s first press conference in months, White House press secretary Jen Psaki quickly moved to walk back the president’s confusing claims regarding the potential illegitimacy of upcoming elections.
“[Let’s] be clear: [President Biden] was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted,” Psaki tweeted on the morning after the press conference. “He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it.”
Psaki doubled down on this claim during her first-ever appearance on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday morning.
“I’ve talked to the president a lot about this, and he absolutely is not predicting that the 2022 elections would be illegitimate,” Psaki told co-hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino. “The point he was raising was both that in 2020, even amongst challenging circumstances, efforts to suppress the votes in the midst of a pandemic there was record turnout. Democrats and Republicans, record turnout to go to the polls.”
