President Donald Trump should stand back and not interfere in Florida's recount efforts, former Sen. Joe Lieberman said, while recalling his time as a 2000 vice-presidential nominee whose own race outcome was not decided for a month because of the state's ballot counts.
"I think President Trump would be best to stand back," Lieberman told CNN's "New Day." "It's hard for him to do. It's not his nature. But there's enough other people in Florida and elsewhere to be screaming at each other about this vote recount that the president of the United States ought to stay above it."
He noted that in 2000, when he was running with Al Gore for the White House, there was a "lot of screaming by politicians in both parties" when Florida ended up in a major election recount, but that President Bill Clinton stayed out of it, "even though he deeply wanted Al Gore and me to get elected."
On Monday, Trump declared through Twitter that an "honest vote count" was not possible in Florida and that the state's elections should be called in favor of Republicans Rick Scott, for Senate, and Ron DeSantis, for governor.
Lieberman said such statements deepen the "skepticism, cynicism, frustration that a lot of people have with government."
Meanwhile, Lieberman said he feels "angry, really" that the problems in Florida have yet to be solved.
"The election of 2000 and this year's election were close, but they shouldn't be decided by essentially the mistake of an election official in the way that the ballot was constructed," said Lieberman.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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