Politics

Chuck Schumer And Bernie Sanders Want A Contingency Plan In Place For If Trump Refuses To Leave Office

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) (R) is flanked by Sen. Bernie Sanders while speaking to the media about President Trump's Proposed FY 2018 budget, on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for a contingency plan in the event that President Donald Trump would refuse to leave office after losing the election — and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has offered his full support to that plan.

Sanders floated the idea during an interview published Saturday by Politico, saying that Trump’s rhetoric up to this point had given every indication that he might refuse to leave if the election did not break his way. (RELATED: ‘A Trojan Horse’: Marc Thiessen Says A Biden-Harris Ticket Is Designed To Hide The Socialism Inside)

“This is not just idle speculation. Trump was saying that the only way he could lose the election is if there was — let me get the exact quote — ‘the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.’ Now he is making that statement at a time when virtually every national poll has him behind,” Sanders explained.

“What we have got to do in the next two months is to alert the American people about what that nightmarish scenario might look like in order to prepare them for that possibility and talk about what we do if that happens,” the Vermont senator added.

Sanders went on to describe the “nightmare scenario” that he imagined could come about, saying, “At a time when some states like Pennsylvania are finding that they don’t have the resources right now to count votes, their mail-in ballots, in a rapid way, that it is possible that in some states Trump will be winning on election night, and yet when all of the votes are counted, he will be behind. He will lose. But during that interval, he will create chaos and confusion by claiming that there is massive fraud within the mail-in ballot process.”

Schumer made it clear that he stood with Sanders in a Saturday tweet, saying, “This is important: I’m standing side-by-side with @SenSanders to make sure we have a plan if President Trump refuses to leave office.”

Schumer and Sanders are far from alone in suggesting that Trump might refuse to leave the White House. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went so far as to say that Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden “should not concede under any circumstances.”

And Biden himself suggested that removing Trump from the White House might require military action.