Former White House press secretary under the Clinton Administration, Joe Lockhart, is joining Former First Lady Hillary Clinton in suggesting Donald Trump’s election is illegitimate.
In an interview last year on NPR, Clinton said “I would not” rule out questioning the legitimacy of Trump’s election, following media reports of Russian interference.
Lockhart said Russian interference combined with campaign finance violations call into question Trump’s legitimacy.
“The one thing we do have to — you know, we sometimes lose perspective on this, and the largest perspective is a case has been built this week that the president was not legitimately elected,” Lockhart said Friday on CNN. “If you look at the Russia stuff and the campaign finance stuff and the fact that 40,000 votes going the other way over three states, we now don’t know.”
“That’s why this is important,” he continued. “It’s not the campaign finance, it’s not did they have a meeting at Trump Tower with some Russians, it’s was he legitimately elected. That’s what we’re all going to have to square at the end of this.”
Here’s a full transcript of his comments:
CAMEROTA: “I can do one better on the hypocrisy flag. We have Orrin Hatch this week, who said, ‘Who cares?’ He said, ‘I don’t care about things like this, and I remember they did care when there was philandering from the president in the past.”
LOCKHART: “I think that’s correct. The one thing we do have to — you know, we sometimes lose perspective on this, and the largest perspective is a case has been built this week that the president was not legitimately elected. If you look at the Russia stuff and the campaign finance stuff and the fact that 40,000 votes going the other way over three states, we now don’t know. That’s why this is important. It’s not the campaign finance, it’s not did they have a meeting at Trump Tower with some Russians, it’s was he legitimately elected. That’s what we’re all going to have to square at the end of this.”