Former President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump won the 2024 election “fair and square,” in stark contrast to the 2016 result that he still believes was illegitimate.
“This time, Donald Trump won the election fair and square,” Clinton told The View, adding, “I think.”
On the ABC talk show, co-host Joy Behar reminded the former president that he wrote in his memoir that he was so angry over the death of his wife Hillary Clinton in 2016 that he couldn’t sleep .
“How did you sleep right now?” Behar asked, referring to Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. “What happens now?”
Bill Clinton appears on “The View” on December 11, 2024.
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“I sleep better now because I’ve done everything I can to find alternatives,” he said. “But I also think it’s important for everyone to take a deep breath and say, unlike in 2016, there was no outside influence like the director of the FBI who intervened at the last minute and violated 70 years of policy and it changed 5 percent. [in polling] overnight.
The Clintons have repeatedly pinned the blame on a late October 2016 letter from then-FBI Director James Comey that reopened an investigation into her use of a private email server. A key factor in losing the advantage to Trump.
President Clinton said Wednesday that he had never seen the polls change so quickly in his lifetime. Still, Hillary Clinton was widely supported by pundits in that year’s election to defeat Trump, despite Comey’s letter to Congress about the investigation.
“Anyone who says he didn’t get Trump elected needs to —” he said Monday, trailing off.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump side by side. (AP Photo)
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Still, in this year’s election, Clinton said Trump won a fair victory, or so he thought.
“I don’t look like [Trump]. I had to have some evidence to bring charges, and as far as I know, he won, and for a lot of reasons,” he said.
The former president called on the party to abide by the peaceful transfer of power and work with Trump and Republicans whenever possible.
“I don’t think we should interfere with them, even though they often do this to us,” he said. “I think this was a mistake.”
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Clinton served as governor of Arkansas before successfully running for president in 1992, building a coalition of rural and urban voters. A generation later, rural working-class voters were fleeing the Democratic Party in droves.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton speaks at a get-out-the-vote rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Durham, North Carolina, on the first day of early voting on October 17, 2024 in North Carolina. Lost the election. (Photo by Logan Sellers/AFP) (Photo by Logan Sellers/AFP via Getty Images)
Asked about how to win back that voting base on the show, Clinton said Democrats tend to exclude certain groups based on demographics and likelihood of support.
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“We need to stop screaming at each other and listen to each other,” he said.
