Pelosi: Harris is ‘safeguard’ if GOP challenges election

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Vice President Harris will be a “safeguard” if President Biden wins the 2024 presidential election and Republicans challenge the results.

“Remember that we will have the vice president that day,” Pelosi said in an interview with The Washington Post. “That’s a safeguard.”

Pelosi also threw cold water on the idea that congressional Republicans would challenge the result, as they did when Biden defeated then-President Trump in 2020. Vice President Mike Pence eventually came under pressure from Trump and other Republicans to not certify the results of the election.

“I don’t think that the Republicans, if we win, are necessarily going to engage in what they did last time,” Pelosi told the Post.

Pelosi made the comments the same day Trump visited the Capitol for the first time since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on it, when hundreds of rioters stormed the building to protest Biden’s victory. 

Some Republicans and Trump have already planted seeds of doubt about the integrity of the 2024 election. 

In a comment to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in May, Trump said he would “gladly accept the results” if “everything’s honest,” declining to simply say he would respect the results. Trump also insisted that he had won the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Biden won Wisconsin by 21,000 votes, a margin of 0.6 percentage points.

Potential Trump vice presidential candidates have also declined to commit to accepting the 2024 election results in nationally televised interviews. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), viewed as a front-runner for the vice presidential slot, repeatedly declined to commit on “Meet the Press” when moderator Kristen Welker asked him six times if he would accept the results. 

Pelosi’s comment on the vice president also came after a war of words between her and Trump. Pelosi shared a statement with The Hill earlier in the day slamming Republicans and Trump for the visit.

“Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime. January 6th was a crime against the Capitol, that saw Nazi and Confederate flags flying under the dome that Lincoln built,” Pelosi said. “It was a crime against the Constitution and its peaceful transfer of power, in a desperate attempt to cling to power.” 

During the meeting with congressional Republicans, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reported Trump said, “Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a whacko, her daughter told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together, there’s an age difference though,” noted that it was close to an exact quote. 

A spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi responded to the reported comments in a statement to The Hill, writing that Trump “has clearly lost his marbles. Not that he had many to begin with.” 

Christine Pelosi, the former Speaker’s daughter, also pushed back on Trump’s claim, writing on social media that Trump is “unwell, unhinged and unfit to step food anywhere near her — or the White House.” 

“Speaking for all 4 Pelosi daughters — this is a LIE,” Christine Pelosi added.