Biden says he is worried about violence around the presidential election

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President Biden speaks during a news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Friday. Biden made a surprise appearance, his first in the briefing room since becoming president, to tout a positive job report and take questions from reporters. / Getty Images

President Biden told reporters Friday he is confident the election will be free and fair, but he said he was concerned about the potential for violence if former President Donald Trump again refuses to accept the will of the voters.

“I’m confident it will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it'll be peaceful,” Biden said during a surprise appearance at the White House daily briefing. “The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out, when he didn’t like the outcome of the election, were very dangerous.”

Biden noted that during this week’s vice presidential debate, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, would not say whether Trump would accept the outcome of the election. When asked if he and Trump would challenge the election results — even if every governor in the nation certified them — Vance demurred, saying he and Trump were “focused on the future.”

“I don’t know anything about what [Biden] said,” Trump told reporters in Georgia on Friday following the president's remarks. “I only can hope that it's going to be free and fair, and I think in this state it will be, and I hope in every state it will be, and I think we're going to do very well.”

Trump often links himself winning with fairness.

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Trump said, “All I want is a fair election. That’s all. Just a fair, honest election. I hope we’re going to get that.”

But when pressed on whether he trusts the process this year, he responded, “I’ll let you know in 33 days.” Two days later, in Michigan, Trump again lied about the results of the 2020 election.

"We won. We won. We did win,” Trump said. “It was a rigged election. It was a rigged election. You have to tell Kamala Harris. That's why I'm doing it again. If I'd thought I lost, I wouldn't be doing this again.”

Trump’s remarks came during a week in which a newly unsealed court filing by special counsel Jack Smith offered perhaps the most detailed picture to date about the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The 165-page document, released Wednesday by the U.S. District judge presiding over the case, says that after Trump lost in 2020, he “resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” and “launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn election results in seven states he had lost.”