LePage calls Trump's election results comment 'an absolute stupid move'

Even Paul LePage, the controversial governor of Maine who has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump for his loud rhetoric and habit of disparaging the press, is harping on the Republican nominee for his refusal to commit to conceding if he loses the November election.

“Not accepting the results, I think, is just a stupid comment,” LePage said on the Portland, Maine, radio station WGAN on Thursday, responding to Trump’s comments at the third presidential debate. “I mean, c’mon. Get over yourself.”


LePage, a Republican, told the radio station he didn’t watch the debate, which took place in Las Vegas on Wednesday night. But asked about it, he still called Trump’s decision not to promise to accept the election results “an absolute stupid move, period.”

LePage has campaigned with Trump in Maine, an ordinarily blue state that can split its electoral votes by congressional district. There is an unusually tight race between the Republican nominee and Democrat Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2nd District, where the electorate is largely white and rural.

Trump’s supporters were on defense on Thursday as Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that the election will be rigged dominated the post-debate news cycle. Clinton, generally declared the third debate’s winner by observers, called Trump’s refusal to say he would accept losing the election “horrifying” and accused him of “talking down our democracy.”

Although he dismissed Trump’s answer in the debate as “stupid,” LePage on Thursday did not deny the conspiracy theory the Republican nominee is propagating about election rigging, for which there is no evidence.

LePage doubled down on his previous statement that officials will not be able to verify the legitimacy of election results in Maine because they cannot tell who is voting, and then signaled his agreement with Trump’s attacks on the press. LePage suggested that members of the political establishment and the news media are indeed biased against Trump and are giving a “free pass” to Clinton, whose campaign he called a “criminal enterprise.”

“Saying it’s rigged — I agree,” LePage said. “There’s no question it’s rigged. You’ve got the inside-the-Beltway people, and the media. And how are you going to win?”

LePage likened Trump’s situation to Andrew Jackson and the election of 1826, noting: “Andrew Jackson clearly won the election but the elitists changed the results.”

There was no presidential election in 1826, but LePage was likely referring to 1824, when Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in the only race in history to have been determined by a vote of the House of Representatives under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment.