House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday there is no way Democrats can “accept a second term” for President Trump while simultaneously being faithful to the U.S. Constitution.
The California Democrat told an audience at Cornell University’s Institute of Politics & Global Affairs that it is a “fact” that rejecting the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s second term in office, should he win, would be the right thing to do.
“We have to make sure — this will sound political, but — we have to make sure that the Constitution wins the next presidential election,” Mrs. Pelosi said during the event, which was livestreamed by Fox Business on Facebook. “We will press the case so that in the court of public opinion people will know what is right. But we cannot accept a second term for Donald Trump if we are going to be faithful to our Democracy and to the Constitution of the United States, and that is just a fact. So, we have to operate on many fronts. We have to operate in the Congress, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion — and we must win the next election.”
Last week, however, Mrs. Pelosi told The New York Times that Mr. Trump would be the one who would not accept the results of the 2020 election.
“We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” she said for a piece published May 4. “If we win by four seats, by a thousand votes each, he’s not going to respect the election.”
Tuesday’s comments were pounced upon by Republicans, who spotlighted the remarks on the “GOP War Room” YouTube channel.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.