Defeated candidate ready to continue legal challenges
President Donald Trump yesterday repeated allegations of widespread US electoral voting fraud and was poised to launch more legal cases this week, while rival Joe Biden was widely accepted as president-elect at home and abroad.
In a frenzy on Twitter yesterday morning, Mr Trump bashed “systemic problems”, “voter fraud” and a worrisome “hundred million mailin” ballots from Philadelphia in Tuesday’s election, citing a prominent legal analyst and others.
Meanwhile, the president is raising cash for an election defence fund to fight legal battles that will struggle to overturn Mr Biden’s significant vote margins in battleground states.
Reports of confusion and an embattled and crestfallen Mr Trump emerged from the White House.
In a tweet on Saturday, Mr Trump, a Republican, said his 71 million tally of “legal votes” was “The most EVER for a sitting President!” – although he did not mention the 75 million votes that went to Mr Biden.
The president was playing golf on Saturday when election results from Pennsylvania pushed Mr Biden above the 270 electoral college threshold to make him the president-elect.
After Mr Biden’s win was announced by all major US media outlets and as congratulatory messages flowed in from overseas, Mr Trump released a statement saying his rival was “rushing to falsely pose as the winner”.
“The simple fact is this election is far from over,” the president said.
“Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated.”
The president complained that observers were denied entry to Pennsylvanian counting centres and that an unspecified number of ballots were “fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters”. Officials in Georgia said there will be a recount in the state, where Mr Biden leads by about 10,000 votes.
Election analysts said recounts typically resulted in changes of a few hundred votes – but not by thousands.
As of yesterday morning, Mr Biden’s margins were wider still in Arizona (an 18,600-vote lead) and Nevada (27,500), the two remaining such states with significant numbers of ballots yet to be counted.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have not presented evidence of widespread voting fraud. Claims of irregularities in some states relate only to handfuls of ballots – not the tens of thousands of bogus Democratic votes necessary to swing the outcome.
The president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a former New York mayor, held a press conference at a landscaping business in Philadelphia on Saturday, describing “suspicious” ballots but offering no hard evidence of fraud.
Mr Trump’s children stuck by their father, with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr taking to social media to echo claims of foul play.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters that the president “intends to fight”.
The Associated Press spoke to several West Wing insiders who indicated Mr Trump would never formally concede the election, but would be likely to leave the White House when his term expires in January.
Mr Trump’s allies have suggested the president may launch a media business or host a television news show to maintain his base of supporters and possibly run for the presidency again in 2024.
His friend and adviser Roger Stone, convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering in a special counsel investigation and pardoned by Mr Trump, told AP that Mr Biden would have a “cloud over his presidency with half the people in the country believing that he was illegitimately elected”.