Trump: Exit depends on Electoral College

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’ll leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden next month, though he vowed to keep fighting to overturn the election and said he might never concede.

“Certainly I will, and you know that,” he said when asked if he would leave the White House if the Electoral College picked Biden.

Though advisers long have said he would leave Jan. 20, this was Trump’s first explicit promise to vacate office if things don’t go his way.

Trump said he planned to press his claims of fraud and said Biden couldn’t have won close to 80 million votes.

His legal team has lost almost every claim in every state.

“It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede,” he said of the election.

Aides privately have said Trump never will concede that he lost.

Asked whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration, Trump demurred.

“I know the answer,” he said, but he declined to provide it.

Even as most of his lawyers have quit and many campaign officials say the effort to overturn the election is going nowhere, Trump said it was going “very well.”

The president made the remarks in the diplomatic room of the White House after he spoke to soldiers across the world.

The Thanksgiving session — an annual tradition for Trump — marked the first time he took questions since the election.

He said he planned to have dinner with his family at the White House on Thursday night after spending much of the day at his golf club in Virginia.

The president also said he planned to campaign in Georgia for two Republicans in Senate runoff elections set for January.

The races are key to the party keeping the majority. Trump said he might go as soon as Saturday, though a White House spokesman later said he meant Dec. 5.

Republicans close to Trump have said he largely was uninterested in the runoffs until his Thursday appearance. He has railed against Georgia officials, who he says haven’t intervened enough as the state has counted ballots.

Trump’s continued rhetoric has worried Republicans working on the Georgia races; they fear his campaign against the election could discourage some supporters from voting.

“I’m very worried about that,” Trump said when asked if Georgia’s runoffs would be legitimate.

“You have a fraudulent system,” he said he told Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

He said his supporters feared the race was illegitimate.

Aides say Trump has begun discussing a 2024 presidential bid, but he said Thursday that he still was focused on 2020.

“I don’t think it’s right he’s trying to pick a Cabinet,” Trump said of Biden.

Trump had blocked a presidential transition for several weeks but relented this week and allowed his team to go forward.

Trump also glancingly addressed the pandemic, which has killed more than 250,000 in the U.S., though mainly to brag.

“Don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine,” he said.

Trump said this was “because the vaccines were me.”

Though advisers long have said Trump would leave Jan. 20, his comments were his first explicit promise to vacate office if things don’t go his way.