Santorum calls Trump’s claims of election cheating ‘dangerous’
Rick Santorum #RickSantorum
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) called President Trump’s claims that he is being cheated out of an election victory “dangerous” and predicted GOP lawmakers would not back up his statement.
“No Republican elected official is going to stand behind that statement. None of them will,” Santorum, a CNN contributor, said on air shortly after Trump delivered a televised statement Thursday accusing election officials of intentionally miscounting ballots.
Santorum said “much” of Trump’s statement was “not factual and was at times incendiary and not something a president of the United States should say.”
The former GOP lawmaker argued there’s no evidence of fraud in the vote counting in battlegrounds such as his home state of Pennsylvania.
“I know there’s a lot of people who think this election’s stolen, a lot of people think there’s fraud,” he said. “There may be fraud, we don’t know that right now. For the president to go out there and claim that without any evidence of that is, is dangerous.
“I just would say to the president, there may be some validity in some of the things that you believe but to go out there and suggest that this is rigged … no.”
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House Thursday evening, claimed “the officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania and other key states are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you’ve written about.”
Trump noted he received a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia “and I know a lot about it.”
“It hasn’t changed, it’s gotten worse,” he said.
“In Pennsylvania, partisan Democrats have allowed ballots in the state to be received three days after the election and we think much more than that,” Trump added. “And they’re counting those without even postmarks or any identification whatsoever.”
Trump also asserted “there have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the nation.”
He said the Trump campaign has been denied access to a vote counting location in Detroit.
“Detroit is another place, and I wouldn’t say it had the best reputation for election integrity. Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots but when our observers attempted to challenge the activity, those poll workers jumped in front of the volunteers to block their view so they couldn’t see what they were doing,” Trump claimed.