Palin says Trump would accept election results if they are ‘legit’

Holly Bailey
·National Correspondent

LAS VEGAS — Sarah Palin defended Donald Trump’s refusal Wednesday night to say whether he would accept the results of the presidential election, telling reporters that the GOP nominee would accept them if they are “legit.”

In her first campaign appearance in months, the former Alaska governor, who attended the third and final debate as a guest of the GOP nominee, made a brief appearance in the spin room. There, she was asked about Trump’s noncommittal answer on whether he would accept the election results if he loses.

“Hey, if they are legit results, then of course they will be accepted,” Palin said. “But, like Donald said, I think he was suggesting that we’d better take a look at everything at the end of the day and make sure everything is legit.”

The 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate suggested that Trump was merely pushing to keep the process “honest.”

“At the end of the day, when everyone has been allowed to take that honest vote and then yeah, we’ve accepted the results of the election if they are fair,” Palin said.

Asked if she agreed with the celebrity businessman’s frequent claim that the election is “rigged,” Palin did not answer and left the spin room with Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager.

It was Palin’s first appearance on the campaign trail since early summer. The former Alaska governor, who was one of the first politicians to endorse Trump in the primary, had been a ubiquitous presence on the campaign trail but cut her schedule after her husband, Todd, was injured in a snowmobile accident ahead of the Florida primary.

Palin again dropped out of the public eye in June and skipped the Republican National Convention in July. She did not respond when asked if she would be campaigning for Trump in the final weeks before Election Day.

Clinton’s campaign responded to Trump’s provocative comment about accepting the election results as “chilling” and suggested that he might be trying to explain away what may turn out to be a loss to Clinton. The former secretary of state has a healthy lead over Trump in the polls.

“I think he’s just trying to find an excuse for the fact that he’s going to lose,” Clinton’s communications director, Jen Palmieri, told reporters after the debate. “And perhaps the fact that he’s going to lose to the first woman president is making it a little harder.”