US Republican senators seeking re-election have lambasted the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, for refusing to commit to respect the outcome of the US presidential election if he is defeated.
Mr Trump dropped the bombshell during the third and final presidential debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas, triggering an angry backlash from prominent Republican senators and contradicting his running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence, and daughter Ivanka Trump that he would accept the result.
“I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense,” Mr Trump told debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News at the debate on Wednesday night – an answer that Mrs Clinton described as “horrifying”.
The Republican candidate kept the issue front and centre in the campaign yesterday when he jokingly told supporters at a rally in Ohio that he would “totally accept” the result “if I win”.
Among those who criticised the New York businessman’s remarks were the 2008 Republican nominee John McCain, who is seeking re-election as a US senator in Arizona, a traditionally Republican state where Mrs Clinton is running a close race against Mr Trump.
Mr McCain dismissed Mr Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud that could tip the election, saying that there have sometimes been irregularities and even fraud, “but never to an extent that it affected the outcome”.
“In every previous election, the loser congratulates the winner and calls them, ‘my president’. That’s not just the Republican way or the Democratic way. It’s the American way,” said the 80-year-old senator, who is part of an increasingly uphill Republican fight to retain control of the US senate.
Republican senator Kelly Ayotte, who is locked in a tough re-election battle in New Hampshire, said that Mr Trump “needs to accept the outcome”. Her senate colleague Rob Portman of Ohio expressed “full faith” in the state’s officials “to ensure the integrity of the election”.
Arizona senator Jeff Flake called Mr Trump’s comments “beyond the pale,” while another Republican opponent of the party’s nominee, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said Mr Trump was “doing the party and country a great disservice”.
President Barack Obama, speaking at a rally in Miami, said that he was glad to see Republicans coming out and saying that claims of widescale voter fraud was “nonsense”.
Mr Obama lashed the Republican nominee’s remarks in Ohio saying that they were “not a joking matter” and “dangerous”, as sowing the “seeds of doubt” about the legitimacy of elections “undermines our democracy”.
“Even when your preferred candidate loses, even when you are the one who is running and you lose, you have got to see the bigger picture and say that here in America we believe in democracy and we accept the will of the people,” said the president.
Sexual comments
Speaking in Ohio, Mr Trump referred to the outcome of the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore that was decided by a Supreme Court case on a recount vote in Florida, arguing that if either candidate conceded three weeks from the election, they would have ceded their right to a challenge or recount.Commentators have noted that Mr Gore never queried the results before voting ended.
Meanwhile, a 10th woman has accused Mr Trump of unwanted sexual contact.
Karena Virginia claims that Trump groped her breast and made sexual comments toward her at a random encounter outside the 1998 US Open tennis tournament. Virginia was 27 at the time. The two had never previously met, she said.
