Donald Trump Attacks Republicans Who Dare to Play Down His 'Rigged' Election Rhetoric

By Meghan Keneally
Oct 17, 2016, 12:11 PM ET

Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims of a fraudulent election process have created a problem not only for members of his own party but also even for his own ticket.

While the Republican presidential nominee railed against alleged "rigging" or a "rigged" election more than 20 times this weekend, some of his fellow Republicans — starting with his running mate — are trying to tamp down the rhetoric.

The GOP vice presidential candidate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, seemed to take a different position on the accusations, saying he and Trump "will absolutely accept the results of the election."

"One of the great, great traditions of America is the peaceful transfer of power ... Elections get rough. I expect they're going to stay just as rough as they are right now going into Nov. 8. The stakes are so high in this election," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who has come under fire from Trump after Ryan advised Republican House members to do what’s best for them when it comes to supporting the party's nominee, released a statement this weekend reiterating that he is confident the election will not be fixed.

"Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity," Ryan's press secretary, AshLee Strong, said in an email.

But Trump is doubling down, making it clear that he's taking aim not only at the "rigged" system but also at the "naive" Republicans who aren't standing by him on the allegations.

Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University, said that while the "idea of a rigged election is fanciful," Trump isn't the first one to bring up the concept.

"We've seen it increasingly on both sides in the years since [George W.] Bush versus [Al] Gore in 2000," Tokaji told ABC News, referring to the election in which the candidate who lost the popular vote ended up winning the presidency because he won the Electoral College.

"On one level this is pre-emptive a-- covering. Trump seems to be preparing an excuse for what seems likely to be a defeat," Tokaji said. "On the other hand, it's very damaging when the losing side or some members of the losing side believe not that they really lost but somehow they were cheated.

"It tends to undermine public faith in our democracy and the legitimacy of democratic elections."

He pointed to more extreme language that, he said, is on "a different level of inflammatory rhetoric than 'the election was rigged,'" including some Trump supporters' hints at possible violence or a "revolution" in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory.

The rhetoric has gotten even more extreme in more recent days, with Mi-Ai Parrish, the publisher of the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic newspaper, responding to death threats she and her staff have reportedly received after the paper's endorsement of Clinton, breaking its 125-year streak of endorsing Republicans.

She wrote an op-ed Sunday detailing how reporters, editors and even paper delivery people were receiving death threats since the endorsement, with at least one caller reportedly mentioning an investigative reporter for the paper who was assassinated by a car bomb 40 years ago. Police in Phoenix have been notified about the calls, Parrish wrote.

Police in North Carolina are investigating an instance in which threats and violence mixed. A GOP office in the state's Orange County was allegedly firebombed over the weekend, and graffiti was left on the building that read, "Nazi Republicans leave town or else."

No one was hurt, but the interior of the building sustained damage.

In less than 48 hours over the weekend, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spoke or tweeted more than 20 times about his belief that the election process is “rigged.”

While concerns about the integrity of the election have been tempered by a number of prominent members of the GOP, fears about voter intimidation, particularly after the firebombing and vandalism of a Republican Party office in North Carolina, are causing anxiety in the party.

At a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in August, Trump encouraged his supporters to “go around and look and watch other polling places,” arguing that the only way he would be beaten in the general election is if “in certain sections of the state they cheat.”

During a campaign rally in Novi, Michigan, in September, he told attendees, “Go to your place and vote. And go pick some other place and go sit there with your friends and make sure it’s on the up and up.”

He added, “So go and watch these voting places.”

Political parties and candidates may appoint poll watchers; however, states differ on the number of observers who are allowed and their qualifications. Trump includes a form on his website so people can sign up to be a volunteer election observer. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, partisan observers, or poll watchers, are “not supposed to interfere in the electoral process apart from reporting issues to polling place authorities and party officials.”

“I’ll look for ... well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” a Trump supporter from Ohio told The Boston Globe. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

Surrogates for the Republican nominee have been pointing the finger at Democrats for allegedly employing voter intimidation tactics, as well as fraud, to manipulate past election results.

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich alleged that voter fraud and intimidation were widespread ranging back to 1960, when, in his view, the presidential election swung to John F. Kennedy as a result.

“You look at Philadelphia, you look at St. Louis, you look at Chicago, I mean, again, I’m old enough, I remember when Richard Nixon had the election stolen in 1960, and no serious historian doubts that Illinois and Texas were stolen,” said Gingrich. “So to suggest that we have — that you don’t have theft in Philadelphia is to deny reality.”

References to voter intimidation in Philadelphia often allude to a 2008 incident in which two members of the New Black Panther Party, one of whom held a billy club, stood outside a polling location and allegedly pointed and shouted at voters.

While it has been surrogates of the Trump campaign raising alarm over the possibility of voter intimidation in November, he discussed plans that would violate anti-intimidation laws if they are carried out on Election Day.

At the Altoona rally he addressed fears of voter fraud in the state, saying he wanted police officers in place to ensure the integrity of the vote.

“We have a lot of law enforcement people working that day. We’re hiring a lot of people,” said Trump. “And we have to call up law enforcement. And we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching.”

However, Pennsylvania law prohibits police officers and soldiers from being within 100 feet of polling places unless they are voting themselves or responding to a call to keep the peace.

Discussions of fraud and intimidation appear likely to continue over the campaign’s final three weeks. Today Trump called Republican leaders “naive” for dismissing his claims.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now an adviser to Trump, joined the candidate’s calls this weekend, pinpointing “dead people” as a concern, asserting they “generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans.”

“I can’t sit here and tell you that they don’t cheat. And I know that because they control the polling places in these areas,” Giuliani said of “inner cities” in an interview with CNN on Sunday. “There are no Republicans, and it’s very hard to get people there who will challenge votes. So what they do is, they leave dead people on the rolls and then they pay people to vote as dead people, four, five, six, seven.”

ABC News’ Chris Donovan contributed to this report.

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