CNN’s Jake Tapper hit Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) with a brutal 2020 election reminder on Sunday as he recalled the Republican’s take on former President Donald Trump casting doubt about his support for a peaceful transfer of power back in 2020.
The host, in a clip from September 2020, declared that Trump’s move at the time was “really quite alarming to a lot” of Republicans before Cotton offered his two cents on the then-president.
“He’s since said that if there’s a clear winner at this court-settled contested election that of course he will,” said Cotton of Trump, whose cases challenging the results of the 2020 election were later rejected by the Supreme Court.
He continued, “But the premise of the question that you just played me, Jake, is that the president is going to lose. I don’t think the president’s going to lose, the president is going to win.”
“It’s a prediction that didn’t age very well,” Tapper said.
“Not only did President Trump lose, he did not accept the court settled contested election, as you phrased it, or abide by the peaceful transfer of power.”
Cotton, in response to the 2020 clip, said Republicans will “of course” accept the election results in November if they’re from “fair and free elections.”
He joins a number of other GOP lawmakers who have shared their conditions for accepting the results of November’s election.
“Any candidate in any race has a right to go to court and seek legal redress if they think there’s been any kind of fraud or cheating, if they think a state or a city didn’t follow the rules or customary practices of their elections,” he said.
“I think that that’s reasonable for President Trump to say, it’s reasonable for any candidate for any office in America to believe.”
Tapper said he doesn’t disagree with Cotton but noted that it’s “not what happened” following the 2020 election with Trump.
“I mean, he contested it up to the U.S. Supreme Court and then it went past that as you know,” Tapper said.