Bill Clinton jokes Trump will be ‘stacking sandbags’ around White House to stay in office amid dire polling

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As Donald Trump continues to insist the November election will be stolen from him, former president Bill Clinton has mockingly said the incumbent will still be refusing to leave the White House on Joe Biden’s inauguration day.

During an Instagram interview with American Urban Radio’s April Ryan, Mr Clinton and his wife made it clear they expected Mr Trump to put up a fight even after he lost.

“I was just thinking he probably won’t even come to Biden’s inauguration. He’ll be stacking sandbags in front of the White House,” joked the former president.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, warned that the Democrats should not underestimate what the Trump campaign will do to win.

“Do not concede under any circumstances. Because I believe the other side is going to cheat and sneak and do everything they can — we’re going to be resolved, and we’re going to be strong, and we’re going to be on that front line, and we’re going to get our country back.”

Mr Trump, who is polling behind Joe Biden both nationally and in many crucial swing states, he has many times declined to promise he will accept the result of the election if he loses, although there is nothing to indicate he will reject the result if he wins.

As the polls have refused to shift in his direction over the summer, the president has ramped up his claims the election is going to be “the most inaccurate” or “most corrupt” in American history, citing the massive expansion in the use of mail-in ballots without any evidence of widespread fraud. (He votes by mail himself.)

Mr Trump at one point said he had considered delaying the election, which does not fall within the president’s authority. Yesterday, he went so far as to say voters in North Carolina should submit mail ballots and then attempt to vote in person as well, a suggestion that many critics point out may have violated a North Carolina law making it a felony to induce others to vote fraudulently.

The president’s persistent assault on the election’s integrity – joined in by many of his allies – has been vigorously rejected by Democrats, who have mounted an all-fronts effort to support mail-in voting, including by bringing the CEO of the US Postal Service up for questioning before a House of Representatives Committee.

Mr Biden, meanwhile, has warned Mr Trump that should he refuse to leave power after losing, he will be removed – by the army if necessary.

“You have so many rank and file military personnel saying, well, we’re not a military state, this is not who we are,” Mr Biden told The Daily Show in June. “I promise you, I’m absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”