US President Donald Trump delivers an update on the so-called Operation Warp Speed program from the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, US, on November 13, 2020. “But certainly we would prefer, and I think the American people would prefer, if the incoming administration and the incoming President could have access to the real-time current information and plans”.
“Hopefully the, the.whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be”.
Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of State, said the Trump campaign was promoting false claims to erode public confidence in the election.
Taken together, the latest developments bode poorly for Trump’s chances of winning the election with unsupported claims of rampant fraud, according to experts.
Mr Trump and his campaign have refused to concede the election, using social media and news conferences to baselessly allege widespread voter fraud.
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is one of the few politicians to have mentioned a 2024 run by Trump, urging the President to do so if his election fraud challenge “falls short” and he is not inaugurated for a second term in January 2021.
But they said Trump and a core group of allies were aiming to keep his loyal base of supporters on his side even in defeat, especially going into a Georgia special election where the control of the U.S. Senate hangs in the balance. His share of the popular vote, at 50.8%, was slightly higher than Ronald Reagan’s share of the vote in 1980 when he defeated Jimmy Carter.
Biden was also projected to have won Arizona, another traditional red state, on Thursday night. A federal law sets what is called the “Safe Harbor” deadline, falling on December 8 this year, the day by which states must submit the victor of the presidential election if they are to be insulated from legal disputes.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered the manual recount, saying it came down to the race being too close.
Trump trailed in the state by roughly 148,000 votes, or 2.6 percentage points, according to Edison Research, with almost 100 percent of the vote counted.
The Trump campaign had initially sought a review of all overvotes, but on Thursday, Langhofer revised his request, telling the judge that he would only seek a review of vote counts if the number of so-called overvotes exceeded the margin of victory.
The message came hours after U.S. election officials said the vote was the “most secure in American history”, the most direct rebuttal from federal and state officials of the president’s claims. The Associated Press called Trump early Wednesday morning, with Biden Trump again outbid Trump by more than $1 million in Facebook ads in that state.
Trump’s decision not to concede is damaging to fair play, order and to Biden’s new presidency, said Bruce Jentleson, professor of political science at Duke University and former foreign policy adviser to 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore.
“As we’ve said, the Trump campaign’s lawsuit was frivolous and their motion to withdraw any claims of relief related to the presidential campaign confirms that this was nothing more than a waste of time”, the Biden campaign said in a statement.
China on Friday became one of the last major countries to congratulate Joe Biden on being elected president. “Because, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know”.
