New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated Tuesday on CNN that a second Trump term could bring election integrity into question for elections in the future.
Ocasio-Cortez appeared on CNN to discuss New York’s special election replacing former GOP Rep. George Santos and the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The network’s host, Jake Tapper, questioned the Democrat representative on Biden remaining as the Democratic nominee, asking if she was worried about challenges within their own party. (RELATED: NBC Polling Shows Trump’s ‘Biggest Lead’ Over Biden As It More Than Doubles)
“Are you worried about, at all, about these challenges from the left? Jill Stein, Cornel West? I don‘t know where RFK Jr. is — whether he’s left, right or center — but there is a real fear that they could take votes away from Biden,” Tapper queried.
Ocasio-Cortez said while it could be a “real” concern for critical swing states, the bigger issue would be if former President Donald Trump was elected for a second term. The Democrat representative questioned if there would be a “verifiable next election” if Trump was to come back to the White House, claiming “progressive values” would protect the country’s democracy.
“That is real, that is real, especially in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania — critical swing states. But we need to understand what we are staring down in this country. If Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, we do not know if there will be a verifiable next election that has integrity,” Ocasio-Cortez stated.
“He already tried to — we saw on January 6, he tried to overturn the results of a presidential election by force, by inciting a riot. And I, you know, I think we need to be very, very realistic about the grave, grave impacts of a Donald Trump election. It is not a joke. It is not a game. We need to protect our democracy and ideally it’s going to be on progressive values,” she continued.
Trump is the frontrunner to be the GOP’s nominee, and hypothetical general election polls between the former president and President Joe Biden continually show Trump leading. A recent poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos of 1,237 U.S. adults found that 37% of those who answered would support Trump while 34% leaned towards Biden. The poll reportedly had a 2.9% margin of error. 10% of those who answered stated they would vote for another candidate while 12% would sit out of voting altogether and 8% did not give an answer, Reuters reported.