President won’t pledge to accept Nov. 3 verdict

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is refusing to publicly commit to accepting the results of the upcoming White House election, recalling a similar threat he made weeks before the 2016 vote, as he scoffs at polls showing him lagging behind Democrat Joe Biden.

“Look ... I have to see,” Trump told moderator Chris Wallace during an interview on ”Fox News Sunday." “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” The Biden campaign responded: "The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

Trump also hammered the Pentagon brass for favoring renaming bases that honor Confederate military leaders. “I don’t care what the military says,” the commander in chief said.

The president stood behind his pledge to veto a $740 billion defense bill over a requirement that the Defense Department change the names of bases named for Confederate military leaders. He also argued there are no viable alternatives for names. “We’re going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton?” Trump asked.

The president described the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as a “a little bit of an alarmist” about the coronavirus pandemic, and stuck to what he had said in February — that the virus is “going to disappear.” On Fox, he said, “I'll be right eventually.”

Trump contends that polls that show his popularity eroding and Biden holding an advantage are faulty. He believes Republicans are underrepresented in such surveys.

“First of all, I’m not losing, because those are fake polls,” Trump said in the taped interview, which aired Sunday. “They were fake in 2016 and now they’re even more fake.”

Trump said he could understand why Black Americans are upset about how police use force against them, but he added his usual refrain that “whites are also killed, too.”

He defended the Confederate flag, saying those who “proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism.”

“They love their flag, it represents the South, they like the South. That’s freedom of speech. And you know, the whole thing with ‘cancel culture,’ we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the North and the South fought. We have to remember that, otherwise we’ll end up fighting again.”

Wallace challenged Trump at times, such as when Trump falsely asserted that “Biden wants to defund the police.” Biden has not joined with activists rallying behind that banner. He has proposed more money for police, conditioned to improvements in their practices.

Trump, 74, stuck to a campaign charge that Biden, 77, is unable to handle the rigors of the White House.