For months Donald Trump called the presidential election “rigged.”
The President-elect has a different word — “scam” — for the recount effort aimed at revisiting the vote in three pivotal battleground States.
“The people have spoken and the election is over,” he declared on Saturday in his first comments about the growing effort to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He added: “We must accept this result and then look to the future.”
Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s fight for a recount got a major boost Friday when Wisconsin officials announced they were moving forward with the first presidential recount in State history.
The incoming President had been paying little if any attention to Ms. Stein’s recount push, but Democratic rival Hillary Clinton forced his hand on Saturday by formally joining the effort.
Ms. Stein, who drew 1 per cent of the vote nationally, is raising millions of dollars to fund the recounts.
Mr. Trump, who repeatedly challenged the integrity of the U.S. election system before his win, called the recount push “a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded.”
“The results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing,” he said in the statement.
Mr. Trump was expected to return to New York on Sunday after spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend here at his beach estate.
His team said the President-elect had scheduled a series of meetings on Monday with prospective hires for his administration. — AP
