The host of ABC's "This Week," former Democratic advisor and former communications director for Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, asked Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) if she was prepared to work with "President-elect" Joe Biden and other Democrats to get the Wuhan coronavirus under control.
Noem's appearance on "This Week" followed Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D-NY) appearance in which Cuomo called on Republicans to accept Joe Biden's victory and predicted that more governors would acknowledge the severity of the coronavirus once President Donald Trump left office.
"Well, it is a regional increase that we're seeing. We are testing more," Gov. Noem responded. "And, frankly, I'm not going to take advice from Gov. Cuomo. He has the second-worst death rate, per 100,000 people, in this nation. He's at 173 deaths per 100,000 per capita. South Dakota is at 54."
Gov. Noem went on to say that she appreciated President Trump giving states the freedom and flexibility to tailor their response to the pandemic, saying the president has "let me do my job."
"But the other thing that I think is going on here, George, is this is all premature," Noem said. "This is a premature conversation because we have not finished counting votes. There're states that have not been called and back in 2000, Al Gore was given his day in court. We should give President Trump his day in court, let the process unfold because, George, we live in a republic."
Stephanopolous responded by asking Gov. Noem if she had any evidence the election wasn't honest, before claiming that there was zero evidence to suggest widespread fraud.
"And that is not true," Noem answered. "People have signed legal documents, affidavits, stating that they saw illegal activities and that is why we need to have this conversation in court. The New York Times itself has said there were clerical errors. ... in Michigan we had computer glitches that turned Republican votes to Democrat votes. You look in Pennsylvania, dead people voted in Pennsylvania."
Michigan officials, while acknowledging that thousands of votes were incorrectly given to Joe Biden that belonged to President Trump, say the glitch was actually "human error." Oops.
"So George, I don't know how widespread it is. I don't know if it will change the outcome of the election," Noem admitted. "But why is everybody so scared just to have a fair election and find out? We gave Al Gore 37 days to run the process before we decided who was going to be president. Why would we not afford the 70.6 million Americans who voted for Trump the same consideration?"
Stephanopoulos concluded the interview by saying Al Gore's election loss was much narrower than President Trump's and asserted that Noem had provided zero evidence the election wasn't fair. Apparently, he missed the list Gov. Noem rattled off just seconds earlier. Stephanopoulos did not give the governor a chance to respond.
The governor also owned ABC with this tweet.
More mischaracterization from ABC. Watch the interview, I gave several specific instances of serious election integrity concerns.
— Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) November 8, 2020
Oh, and it's SOUTH Dakota. https://t.co/Yh4erkUstH