Trump retracts apparent admission of poll defeat
washington — US President Donald Trump appeared accidentally to admit his election defeat in a tweet on Sunday morning — before reversing course to claim he won, and once again push unsubstantiated claims of mass fraud in the vote.
Trump has refused to concede the November 3 US election to challenger Joe Biden, and repeatedly said he intends to overturn the result through legal cases.
His aides say he is preparing for a second term in office despite the vote count confirming Biden’s clear victory. “He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump tweeted early on Sunday.
The phrasing — coming two days after a slip in which he said “time will tell” if he remains president — was immediately seized upon as one more step towards admitting defeat.
But the president soon followed up with a sharp U-turn, tweeting: “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go.”
Thousands of Trump supporters rallied in Washington on Saturday, backing his claims of fraud, with clashes erupting in the evening with rival protesters.
At least 20 people were arrested, reports said, including four for firearm violations and one for assault on a police officer. —
“The UAE has worked with whichever US administration the American people choose, and I have no doubt that the relationship will remain the strong and strategic partnership that it always has been. Over the decades, the UAE has been a primary partner for the United States in the region. We have been on the battlefield together countering extremism and terrorism in various theatres,” she said.
“The UAE firmly believes in the importance of the US role in the Middle East — its stabilising role in the region, and I think we’ll continue to have those conversations around the future stability and strategic dialogue that our region so desperately needs. A strong partnership with the US and with its people is definitely at the top of the foreign policy priority of the UAE,” Nusseibeh said.
While the Abraham Accord continue to move fast on the ground, and new partnerships are announced almost daily, the UAE hopes it doesn’t stop there.
“If we can show that this is a successful case study on how to do business in the region, we can widen the tent, bring more people in, and hopefully create a new dynamic that we are seeking to ultimately create — the dynamic for a Middle East wide peace that includes a resolution to the Palestinian Israeli conflict and the two-state solution along the international parameters that we also subscribe to.”
Asked whether the UAE is involved in Israeli-Palestinian back channels, Nusseibeh maintained that the UAE has never been a front row player in this issue, but highly encourages a return to the negotiating table.
“We have consistently been part of the Arab consensus around the two-state solution and we will continue to be part of that Arab consensus. Of course the issue of annexation was something that we were hearing in European capitals and around the world, it was going to be the death knell of the two-state solution. And so I think incorporating it into our normalisation agreement hopefully created that window, that dynamic for a change and it’s up to the sides to step through.”
While some have suggested that the Israel-UAE deal is more about Iran than peace, Emirati officials have dismissed this notion, saying neither Iran or any other country influenced the Abraham Accord.
“This agreement stands on its own merits. It doesn’t have to be about any other country, it isn’t about any other country apart from the UAE and Israel, and I think that it’s clear from how quickly we moved from normalisation stage in signing, to the plethora of agreements we are now working on that there is an energy and enthusiasm on both sides to move in this direction quickly.”
While Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, watch carefully to see how the Biden administration will deal with the Islamic Republic, Iran President Hassan Rouhani is sending his own message to the US President-elect — “compensate for past mistakes” and return to the 2015 nuclear deal.