Former President Bill Clinton said that President-elect Donald Trump had won the 2024 election “fair and square,” in contrast to what he still believes was an illegitimate result in 2016.
During an appearance on “The View,” Clinton acknowledged that Trump’s victory this year was different from his own defeat in 2016. He stated that he didn’t have evidence to back up claims that Trump didn’t win fairly, but rather relied on his own assessment of the situation.
Clinton’s comments were made in response to co-host Joy Behar’s reminder that he wrote in his memoir about being outraged over his wife Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 and struggling to sleep due to the result. When Behar asked him how he was sleeping now, given Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, Clinton replied that he was sleeping better now because he had done everything he could for the alternative.
The former president also praised the peaceful transfer of power, saying that he believed it was important for Democrats to work with Trump and Republicans when possible, rather than simply jamming them as they often did to Democrats.
When asked about the Democratic Party’s struggle to win back rural, working-class voters who had abandoned the party, Clinton acknowledged that Democrats often wrote off certain groups based on demographics and likelihood of support. He urged Democrats to “quit screaming at each other and listen to each other” in order to better connect with these voters.
Clinton’s comments marked a departure from his previous criticisms of the 2016 election, in which he and his wife blamed FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for her narrow loss to Trump.
