There are huge differences between the two.
Yeah, the HUGE difference being that in one case you've got a guy who is saying, "Mehhh... I'm going to keep my options open", and in the other case you've got a guy actually exercising some of those options.
The way the leftist media is handling this you'd think that Trump alluded to nefarious some plan to take the White House by force of arms whether he won the election or not.
This whole thing is stupid, it's nonsense political spin and the sheep are eating it up.
Trump's mistake is that he actually told the truth.
We all know that if there were any means by which any candidate could reasonably contest an election's results they'd do it.
I see many folks bandying around Gore's contention of the 2000 presidential election results as though that's the only time in history it's happened.
It's not.
Just at the federal level the results of 3 presidential elections, roughly two dozen Senatorial elections, and over 500 House elections have been contested after election day.
But folks who are ignorant of those facts (virtually everybody, yourself obviously included) apparently seem to think that contesting the results of a federal election is some unusual and excessively rare event rather than a commonplace part of our electoral process.
Again, Trump's mistake was simply telling the truth where every other politician would have lied, and then gone on to do whatever they were going to do anyhow.
If Trump were a seasoned politician, who had already built a substantial career on lying, gladhanding, and answering questions without ever really giving any kind of answer at all, he probably would have known that he was supposed to lie to the American people and expect them to lap it up like dogs.
And God knows, the CAN'T possibly have a guy who shoots from the hip and actually tells people the truth in the White House.