Repub­li­can U.S. Sen. Cory Gard­ner on Thurs­day stressed the impor­tance of a peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump declined Wednes­day to com­mit to a peace­ful trans­fer to Demo­c­rat Joe Biden if he los­es in November.

“That’s some­thing I’ve talked about in speech­es from my very first days when Nan­cy Pelosi peace­ful­ly hand­ed the gav­el over to John Boehn­er,” Gard­ner said when asked to com­ment on Trump’s state­ment. “It’s a hall­mark of our democ­ra­cy. And I’ve spo­ken at length about it in the past about the con­tin­ued need to use that as a sym­bol of democ­ra­cy,” accord­ing to a pool report from Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Though Gard­ner endorsed the con­cept of a peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er, he did not direct­ly address what the pres­i­dent said, nor did he utter Trump’s name. Trump ear­li­er this week described Gard­ner as “very, very loy­al to the par­ty,” and has pre­vi­ous­ly thanked him for unwa­ver­ing support.

Tweet­ed John Hick­en­loop­er, the Demo­c­rat run­ning to unseat Gard­ner this Novem­ber, “Cory Gardner’s cow­ard­ly silence on Don­ald Trump’s attacks on our democ­ra­cy speaks vol­umes. We must — and we will — have a peace­ful trans­fer of power.”

Trump said four years ago he wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly hon­or a Hillary Clin­ton vic­to­ry, and he’s repeat­ing that threat now.

“We’re going to have to see what hap­pens,” Trump said at a press con­fer­ence Wednes­day. “You know that I’ve been com­plain­ing very strong­ly about the bal­lots, and the bal­lots are a disaster.

“You’ll have a very peace­ful — there won’t be a trans­fer frankly. There’ll be a con­tin­u­a­tion,” Trump con­tin­ued. “The bal­lots are out of con­trol, you know it, and you know, who knows it bet­ter than any­body else? The Democ­rats know it bet­ter than any­body else.”

Trump is also lay­ing ground­work to ques­tion the legal legit­i­ma­cy of the elec­tion, accord­ing to nation­al reports, stat­ing that it’s impor­tant for Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s U.S. Supreme Court seat to be filled prompt­ly so that there can be nine jus­tices to eval­u­ate poten­tial law­suits relat­ed to mailed ballots.

On this front, Gard­ner is not oppos­ing Trump. Con­tra­dict­ing his own 2016 stance, the sen­a­tor has said he will vote to con­firm a “qual­i­fied” nom­i­nee to the court, a vote that could have pro­found impact on whether there is any need to trans­fer pow­er next year.