‘Americans will honour fair election’

WASHINGTON: President-elect Joe Biden said that Americans “won’t stand” for attempts to derail the US election outcome, as President Donald Trump called for the results to be overturned.

In a speech on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, Biden said in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware that Americans “have full and fair and free elections, and then we honour the results”.

“The people of this nation and the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else.”

The Democrat’s statement signaled a hardening line against Trump who for more than three weeks has been touting conspiracy theories, with no meaningful evidence, that Biden stole victory on Nov 3.

Trump, who also issued a full pardon for former security aide Michael Flynn, convicted of lying to the FBI over Russia contacts, dug his heels in.

“We have to turn the election over,” he told Republican supporters in Pennsylvania.

“This election was rigged,” Trump said via telephone, repeating several claims of vote tampering that have been shot down in courtrooms across the country.

Trump said “all we need is to have some judge listen to it properly”.

Trump had been due earlier to appear at a Republican meeting, which took place near the Civil War battlefield site of Gettysburg. He cancelled at the last minute. The gathering was falsely portrayed by the president on Twitter as a “very important Pennsylvania State Senate hearing”. – AFP