CNN's New Day was discussing the likelihood that the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary will go to a recount.
"President Trump who of course has backed Dr. Mehmet Oz has thrown his two cents in. He wrote, 'Dr. Oz should declare victory, like now, before all the votes are counted.' Joining us now, CNN political analyst and senior political correspondent for the New York Times, Maggie Haberman. That's something, Maggie," John Berman said.
"It's something we've seen before, right? It's something we saw Donald Trump do with his own victory and he is now trying to duplicate that," she said.
"I don't think he would be doing that if he felt entirely confident that Oz was going to win at the end of the day when these ballots are all counted, but what he is doing is muddying the waters and there are huger implications here because Republicans are trying to retake the Senate, it is going to be much harder if Donald Trump is casting doubt on Dave McCormick the way he's clearly prepared to do."
"What's important, though, is the reaction that you're seeing or not seeing from Mehmet Oz in response to these comments and from Dave McCormick," Berman said.
"Dave McCormick, I think, you know, has taken a lot of lumps from Donald Trump, so I'm not really surprised that he's not saying something until he knows where this is headed," Haberman said.
"In Oz's case, we know that Donald Trump when he did a rally for him, said he agrees with me about 2020, Dave McCormick -- or, you know, that Dave McCormick doesn't agree with me and the implication was that Oz does.
"I'm not at all surprised to see how this is playing out. But again, this is really dangerous what Donald Trump is saying and it should not be minimized. This isn't just him complaining that he lost an election, you know, all of the things that got said after November 3rd, 2020, 'Donald Trump has to cool off, this is hard for him,' et cetera, et cetera, all of the rationalizations that ended up snowballing into something more. Now he's willing to say this about other people's elections and we are heading down a different path."
Berman pointed out every vote has the same validity, whether in person or by mail.
"A vote counted today is every bit valid as a vote that was counted on Tuesday. You mentioned it could hurt Republicans long term. In Georgia, you know, in 2020 Trump was complaining about the election, Republicans think that depressed the vote in the runoff here. So Trump doing this could hurt whoever the nominee is long term," he said.
"Hurt whoever it is the nominee in the long term, could hurt to your point in other states. We know that in 2020 both Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy tried talking to Donald Trump about 'Stop talking about by-mail voting this way, there are districts and whole states like Montana where we rely on this, our voting base relies on this. And you are causing us a problem.'
And he doesn't care, because it doesn't matter to him," she concluded.
