Missouri Gov. Mike Parson won’t say if President Joe Biden was legitimately elected
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson wouldn’t say on Wednesday whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected, hours after the new president took office.
The Republican governor acknowledged Biden is president and said he wants him to do well, but didn’t directly answer a reporter’s question about the legitimacy of Biden’s election. Some congressional Republicans, including Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, had voted to overturn Biden’s victory in multiple states.
Parson’s remarks came on Inauguration Day and two weeks after a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol with chants of a stolen election. Now-former President Donald Trump himself has falsely claimed he won the election, and his legal team pursued claims of voter fraud that were quickly tossed out of court.
“Well, first of all, again, I’m not going to get into political hype with all this,” Parson said at a news conference. “He’s president, he took the oath of office today. That’s what I do know.”
Parson was responding to a two-part question about his relationship with the Biden administration and whether he considers Biden legitimately elected. Parson also said he will do whatever he can with an administration to put “Missouri first.”
Parson, who took office in 2018 but was elected to a full term in November, has defended Trump in the past. In the hours after the Capitol storming, Parson said Trump didn’t bear any blame, though Trump had made incendiary comments at a rally near the White House just before the insurrection.
But Parson has also refused to say whether Hawley should resign over his role in attempting to block certification of the election.
Parson’s comments on Wednesday came after Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, had chaired Biden’s inauguration.
“Let me just wrap this up, so we don’t get a ‘everyone try to figure out what is the governor saying,’” Parson said. “Let me be real clear on this. When I was in the United States Army, you served the commander in chief. The commander in chief is the president of the United States. It doesn’t go by Democrat, it doesn’t go by Republican. He’s the commander in chief of the armed forces.”
Parson said he wants every president, “no matter what the circumstances,” to do well. “Because if he does well, the country does well,” he said.
