The White House on Thursday denied President Joe Biden thinks the 2022 midterm election will be illegitimate - their second clean up from his press conference the previous day. But the messaging got mixed when a prominent black Democratic lawmaker said he was 'absolutely concerned' this year's election won't be legitimate. Biden, in his nearly two-hour press conference on Wednesday, was asked if the 2022 election would be legitimate if Democrats' voting rights package didn't pass in the Senate. 'I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,' he said in response. 'The increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.' Critics immediately lashed out, asking how Biden could question the legitimacy of the election after slamming Donald Trump for his false claim he won in the 2020 contest. White House press secretary Jen Psaki took to Twitter Thursday morning to clarify. 'Lets be clear: @POTUS was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted,' she wrote. 'He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it,' she added. White House press secretary Jen Psaki denied President Joe Biden thinks the 2022 midterm election will be illegitimate But some Democrats are concerned the 2022 midterm won't be a legitimate election, citing a slew of new voting laws passed in GOP-led states. 'I'm absolutely concerned about that,' Rep. James Clyburn told CNN. He cited concerns that black voters have a history of being disinfranchised and the Supreme Court striking down portions of the Voting Rights Act. Between January 1 and December 7, 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, the nonpartisan Brennan Center found. More than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions, the center said. The Democrats' massive federal voting law package would address those Democratic concerns. But that legislation died in the Senate Wednesday night when Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused to join their fellow Democrats in killing the Republicans' filibuster. Republicans objected to the legislation, saying elections are state issues and should not be run on the federal level. It was the second incident the White House had to clear up after Biden took questions from more than 20 reporters on Wednesday. The first involved a major verbal flub on Russia and the Ukraine. Republicans and Democrats' alike criticized Biden for seeming to indicate he would be okay if Russia made a 'minor incursion' of the Ukraine. The White House quickly put out a statement on Wednesday night clarifying the U.S. would accept no military action by Russia. And Biden himself clarified his comments on Thursday morning, saying 'if any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion.' Prominent Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn said he is concerned that the 2022 midterm election will be illegitimate, particularly after the Senate failed to pass voting rights legislation President Biden said in his press conference he was concerned the 2022 election will be illegitimate, giving his officials a second mess to clean up from his nearly two-hour event But Biden left it to his subordinates to clean up his comments on the legitimacy of this November's election - as Republicans called him hypocritical. Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who heavily criticized Donald Trump for falsely claiming he lost the 2020 election, also slammed Biden's remarks 'It's the same path that Donald Trump went down, which is attempting to delegitimize an election*, which in my opinion, is a unfortunate and potentially dangerous course to take for the leader of democracy,' Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. Psaki bluntly said Biden was not calling 2022 'illegitimate.' 'He is not predicting that the 2022 elections would be illegitimate,' she said on Fox News on Thursday. The issue also came up in her daily press briefing on Thursday. She said what Biden was concerned about was a repeat of efforts on behalf of Trump supporters to try and overturn election results. 'The point he was making is that, as recently as 2020, as we know, the former president was trying to work with local officials to overturn the vote count and not have ballots counted,' Psaki said. Vice President Kamala Harris was also grilled about Biden's comments in a series of interviews she did on the morning news shows to mark her and Biden's one-year in the White House. 'Is [Biden] really concerned that we may not have fair and free elections?' NBC's Today host Savannah Guthrie asked her. 'The president has been consistent on this issue,' Harris said. 'And the issue is that there are two bills – the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act – that have been the solution that has been offered to address the fact that around our country, states have put in place laws that are purposely making it more difficult for the American people to vote,' Harris explained. She said the laws failing would be felt by 55 million Americans from all political parties and of all socioeconomic persuasions. Guthrie and Harris then got into a cross-talk match where the vice president asked to be able to finish her statement before the host was able to push her on the matter. 'The specific question, if you don't mind – does he think, now that these bills haven't been passed, that the '22 midterms won't be legitimate or fair or free?' Guthrie pressed. 'Let's not conflate issues,' Harris responded before trying to walk back on suggesting there may be concerns over the fairness of the midterm elections. 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