US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Donald Trump will be leaving the White House if he loses the presidency in November, “whether he knows it yet or not”.
Pelosi’s comments come after Trump refused to commit to respecting the results of the 2020 presidential election in an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
“There is a process,” Pelosi told MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.
“It has nothing to do with if the certain occupant of the White House doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there because the presidency is the presidency.”
In the Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, Trump said he’d “have to see”, when asked if he would accept the results of the election.
“No. I have to see,” Trump said. “Look you – I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say ‘yes.’ I’m not going to say ‘no.’ And I didn’t last time, either.”
“Whether he knows it yet or not, he will be leaving,” Pelosi said. “Just because he might not want to move out of the White House doesn’t mean we won’t have an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a duly elected president of the United States.”
Pelosi said she had a continuation of government meeting last week, noting she is, as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, “second in line to the presidency”, behind Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
“I say to them, ‘This is never going to happen.’ God willing, it never will. But there is a process,” she said. “The presidency is the presidency. It’s not geography or location.”
In his interview, Trump also impressed, for the second time this month, that the virus is “going to disappear” and that he’s “been right probably more than anybody else”.
He claimed mail-in voting, which is expected to be widely used in some states to avoid the spread of COVID-19, will “rig” the upcoming election results.
Trump then said that his Democrat rival Joe Biden is “not competent” to be president, saying Biden is “mentally shot” and “doesn’t know he’s alive”.
These comments come as Trump faces plummeting approval ratings and dissatisfaction with his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.