TOP REPUBLICANS SHUN TRUMP, VOW PEACEFUL WHITE HOUSE TRANSITION

US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans repudiated President Donald Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, assuring American voters the lawmakers would accept the outcome of November’s election.

Trump declined on Wednesday to embrace a peaceful transfer in response to a reporter’s question and said he expected his election battle with Democrat Joe Biden to be settled by the Supreme Court. The Republican president’s exchange with reporters set off a fury that prompted several Republicans in Congress to distance themselves from Trump, Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu reported for Reuters. 

Despite nearly four years of incendiary statements by Trump, members of his own party have regularly been loath to criticize him, as many feared political retribution. “The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th. There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792,” McConnell wrote in a morning tweet but did not directly criticize Trump. Later, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told a news briefing: “The president will accept the results of a free and fair election.” 

“President Trump, you are not a dictator and America will not permit you to be one,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who took to the Senate floor to call the president “the gravest threat” to U.S. democracy. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who aligns with Democrats and who lost to Biden in the party’s presidential nominating race, called for an independent commission to oversee the upcoming election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cautioned against panicking over the remarks of a president who she said admires autocratic leaders. At a news conference, she urged Americans to cast their ballots and admonished Trump: “You are not in North Korea, you are not in Turkey, you are not in Russia.”

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