Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) “congratulated” him on clinching the Democratic nomination for California’s Senate race despite her claims of a “rigged” election last week.
“She congratulated me, which I certainly viewed as a concession. And she was very gracious in her message to me. And I appreciated the call. Look, I have been on both sides of elections, winning them and losing them. And it’s tough,” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Porter has doubled down on her claims that the California primary election was rigged. In a statement last week, she said that “‘Rigged’ means manipulated by dishonest means,” after being met with immediate blowback for her choice of words.
“Thank you to everyone who supported our campaign and voted to shake up the status quo in Washington. Because of you, we had the establishment running scared — withstanding 3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election,” Porter said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after the race was called last week.
Schiff pushed back on using the term “rigged” in his interview Sunday.
“That term ‘rigged,’ though, is a very loaded term in the era of Trump. It connotes fraud or ballot-stuffing, false claims like those of Donald Trump,” he said.
“And I think what’s remarkable is Democrats very quickly rallied to say, ‘No, we don’t use that language. The election was legitimate.'” And this is a sharp contrast to how the Republican Party treats allegations of rigged elections … they’ve gone along with them,” he added.
He pointed to the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol as an example of how he says Republicans respond to claims of election fraud.
“Indeed, they’re urging President Trump to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists if he ever got a chance. So, very different reaction among the parties to any kind of challenge to our democracy or suggestion that elections are illegitimate. But look, my opponents have been very gracious, and I have nothing but respect for them,” he said.