Vice President Kamala Harris said her team is prepared to counter former President Donald Trump if he prematurely declares victory in the 2024 election.
Harris spoke with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson on Tuesday, with just two weeks to go until voters head to the polls. Harris has been on a nonstop tour of swing states across the nation and has used her appearances to cast the race as a choice between stability and chaos.
Jackson asked what her team planned to do if Trump once again declared victory — as he did in 2020 — before all votes had been counted.
“Well let me say this: We’ve got two weeks to go, and I’m very much grounded in the present in terms of the task at hand,” Harris said. “And we will deal with election night and the days after, as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that as well.”
Jackson went on to ask if Harris had teams ready to go for that possibility, to which the vice president replied: “Of course.”
“This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked,” she said. “Some were killed. This is a serious matter. The American people are, at this point, two weeks out, being presented with a very, very serious decision about what will be the future of our country.”
The vice president has regularly called out Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and his ongoing efforts to sow distrust about the electoral process heading into November.
The former president has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that the only way he could lose the race is if Democrats cheat.
“If I lose ― I’ll tell you what, it’s possible,” Trump told a crowd at a Michigan rally last month. “Because they cheat. That’s the only way we’re gonna lose, because they cheat.”
He recently conceded that he hadn’t seen any evidence of cheating thus far, but he knew the other side, “and they are not good.”