Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
AMERICA RIPPED APART
Biden calls for calm as sore loser Trump demands counts be stopped
AS the man supposed to be leading the US cried “fraud”, Joe Biden last night urged calm across the fractured country.
The Democratic candidate led President Donald Trump in the polls 253 to 213 – and is expected to win.
Mr Trump demanded “stop the count” as armed mobs who support him descended on polling centres.
Speaking from Delaware, Mr Biden said: “In America the vote is sacred... each vote must be counted.”
WITH Donald Trump demanding “stop the count”, armed mobs who support him descended on polling centres in the US.
But while the President was accused of stoking up anger and unrest, rival Joe Biden called for calm and said the election is “sacred”.
As Trump claimed the Democrats are trying to “steal the election”, Biden was being briefed about the pandemic – with new cases setting a US daily record of 102,591 on Wednesday.
With Republicans fearing the postal votes still being counted would cost Trump the election, the President claimed he was being cheated out of victory by “illegal and late” ballot papers.
Hundreds of his supporters, many of them armed, protested at vote-counting sites, causing officials to lock staff in for their protection.
In Phoenix, Arizona, about 150 pro-trump demonstrators, some carrying rifles, gathered outside the county recorder’s office.
Protesters argued that Adrian Fontes, the official who oversees elections in Maricopa County, was failing to count some ballots and costing the President votes. There was no evidence any ballots had been wrongly discarded.
Trump supporters banged on the glass and chanted slogans outside the room where ballots were being counted in Detroit, Michigan. Biden supporters across the US were demanding that
every vote be counted. In Portland, Oregon, anti-fascist protesters burnt an American flag, and police declared a riot after demonstrators began damaging businesses.
Marchers had banners including one with a picture of a rifle and the slogan: “We don’t want Biden – we want revenge... for police murders... and fascist massacres.”
Meanwhile, j ournalists and anti-racism protesters were arrested by armed officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
BEER WE GO Fury in North Las Vegas
after a major road was blocked. With Biden looking like he was heading for victory, Trump said he would take legal action in a bid to prevent Biden winning states that would get him over the line.
The President emailed supporters asking for money to help his legal fight. The message said: “Just like I predicted, mail-in ballots are leading to CHAOS like you’ve never seen.
“The Radical Left is going to do whatever it takes to try and rip a TRUMP-PENCE VICTORY away from you. We can’t allow
the Left-wing MOB to undermine our Election. I’m asking my fiercest and most loyal defenders, like YOU, to FIGHT BACK!”
Biden, meanwhile, called for cool heads. After attending a Covid briefing, he said: “The vote is sacred. It’s how people of this nation express their will. It is the will of the voters, no one, not anything else that chooses the President of the United States of America.
“So each ballot must be counted and that’s what we’re going to see going through now. And that’s how it should be.
“Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well. It’s been
the envy of the world. We continue to feel very good about where things stand. We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners.
“So I ask everyone to stay calm, all the people to stay calm, the processes is working, the count is being completed.”
Trump, who said the election is “a fraud on the American public”, demanded vote-counting to stop and has launched lawsuits in Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia as former
Vice-president Biden approached the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
In Wisconsin, a state called for Biden, the Trump campaign has requested a recount.
Trump was yesterday dealt a blow in Michigan when a judge dismissed his campaign’s lawsuit demanding a halt to the vote-counting until its representatives had “meaning ful” access to ballot counting and adjudication.
Judge Cynthia Stephens said she was highly sceptical about the lack of admissible evidence.
She added: “What I have is, at best, a hearsay affidavit that addresses a harm that would be significant. We’ve got an affidavit that is not first-hand knowledge.”
The lawyer representing Michigan, Heather Meingast, said the case was essentially moot because the counting had already finished.
In Georgia, a court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Republicans aimed at preventing “unlawful counting of ballots” in Savannah.
They filed the court action after a poll watcher for the party allegedly saw unprocessed absentee ballots mixed in with absentee ballots that were set to be recorded.
As the count stretches into its fourth day, the final result is still not known.
Based on projections last night, Biden leads the race with 253 electoral votes. President Trump has 214. Postal ballots, which are still being counted, are heavily favouring Biden.
Some counting sites took a break from tallying the ballots yesterday.
Trump’s campaign claimed that in Nevada, which could now return its result on Sunday, there has been widespread voter fraud. The campaign said it has “evidence” that “tens of thousands of votes” had been cast there fraudulently. Trump aide Ric Grenell, former Director of National Intelligence, said: “We are confident that when all legal votes are tallied, and only legal votes are tallied, President Trump will win the state of Nevada. Ballots are not automatically legal votes until they’re checked. We are not being able to check.”
Grenell added: “There’s a 30-day residency requirement in the state of Nevada.
“If you haven’t been in the state for 30 days it is illegal to vote. We are filing this federal l aw suit to prot e ct legal voters. It is unacceptable in this country to have illegal votes counted. That is what’s happening i n the state of Nevada.” Despite Trump’s legal challenges, the Biden campaign remained confident of victory. Manager Jen O’malley Dillon said: “I think the story is going to be a very positive story for [Biden].
“The counting is happening, it’s going to take time. We need to allow it to get done and done well. We are very confident whatever happens with the counting we will come out ahead.”
HE has been running for US president since 1987 but Joe Biden is today on the verge of finally becoming the leader of the free world.
Two attempts failed but the setbacks were nothing in comparison to the personal tragedy he has overcome to reach the Oval Office.
But in what should have been an easy home run for the former university baseball star, he failed to attract votes from key groups.
Today, after launching his presidential transition website, Biden, 77, has begun to conduct an autopsy on a broken country and why his campaign struggled.
In battleground states such as Texas and Florida, communities with large Latino numbers showed little love for the Democrat after backing Hillary Clinton four years ago.
The failure prompted criticism from some of the party’s leading figures as Donald Trump’s claim Biden would bring socialism to the US frightened people who had fled such regimes.
Within the black community, particularly among men, polls since Tuesday’s election show Biden reached a new low for their votes.
Trump gained endorsements from rappers such as Lil Wayne, Ice Cube and Kanye West while claiming no one had done more for the African American community.
On the campaign trail, the US leader also hammered “Sleepy Joe” on his record in the Senate, none more so than for his actions in the 1990’s “tough on crime” era. Biden voted for mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking and increased funding for federal jails
– policies that contributed to the mass incarceration of black men.
But voters, including hundreds of thousands of Republicans, say they backed him for his decency.
And he pledged to fight for those who did not vote for him as much as those who did.
“We have to stop treating our opponents as enemies,” he said on Wednesday while waiting for the votes to be counted.
“We are not enemies. What brings us together as Americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart.
“So let me be clear. I was campaigning as a Democrat but I will govern as an American president. The presidency itself is not a partisan institution. It’s the one office in this
WIFE Jill has never been far from his side nation that represents resents everyone. And it d e ma n d s a d duty u ty of care for or all
Americans. And that is precisely what I will do. I will work k as hard for those who didn’t vote ote as those who did vote for me.” e.”
His principles s were instilled in him from the e day he was born.
During his 47-year career in public office, he has worked ed with giants of the Senate and met many y world leaders.
None of them have left eft as deep an impression on him as his s father, Joseph Biden Sr. His dad had it all l in his 20s, sailing yachts off the New England d coast, driving fast cars and flying planes.
A decade later, he found d himself with a wife and four children living in a two-bedroom apartment in Wilmington, n, Delaware, selling used cars. He had lost his wealth to a thieving partner but never bemoaned ned his fate.
His son said his father taught him lessons that have been guiding principles inciples throughout his life.
Biden Sr, who died in 2002 aged 86, would tell him: “Remember, nobody body is better than you, Joe, but you’re better r than nobody,” and “the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down but how quickly uickly he gets up”.
They have been the recurring urring themes of his campaign speeches. Raised aised in Scranton,
I was campaigning as a Democrat but I will govern as an American president JOE BIDEN ON HOW HE WANTS TO LEAD THE COUNTRY
Pennsylvania, he wa was a poor student b but became class president. presid He suffered with wit a stutter but reduced his impediment by reciting recit poetr y i n front o of a mirror. On a spr spring break trip to the Ca Caribbean, he met university univer student Neilia Hunter Hun and “fell ass over tin cup in love”. Encouraged by his new love, he gained gaine a place at Syracu Syracuse University Law Sch School upon his graduat graduation from Delaware in 19 1965. The couple married the next year.
At best, he was a medim ocre law student bu but in 1968, Biden moved back b to Wilmington to be begin practising at a law firm firm. He also became an ac active member of the Democr Democratic Party and in 1970 was elec elected to the local council.
While serving as councillor, in 1971, Bid Biden, by then a father-of-three, started his own law firm. A year later he beat Republi Republican incumbent J Caleb Boggs for the Senate. But
a week before Christmas 1972, his wife and baby daughter Naomi were killed in a car accident. His sons, Beau and Hunter, survived.
Biden was inconsolable, recalling: “I began to understand how despair led people to just cash in. How suicide wasn’t just an option but a rational option. I felt God had played a horrible trick on me and I was angry.”
promi But determined se to the to people honour of his Delaware, he continued in the Senate commuting three hours a day so he could see his children at night.
Biden found love again after going on a blind date with Jill Jacobs. They married in 1977 and had daughter Ashley four years later.
Jill, who holds two master’s degrees, was seen to be one of her husband’s presidential campaign’ s most prolific surrogates, participating in fundraisers and rally events.
She intends to work two jobs – First Lady and English professor. “I can have my own job, my own life, but also work on issues,” she said. “I can have it all, really.”
presidency Biden first in 1987 entered but he the dropped race out f or after the three months due to a supposed plagiarism scandal involving former Labour leader Neil
Kinnock. He began a speech by claiming he was the first in “a thousand generations” to go to university in his family. Kinnock had made the same statements in a past speech. Biden later admitted he had family members who had gone to university before him. Before being chosen as Obama’s Vice President, he had his own presidential campaign for the 2008 election before dropping out. After seven years at Obama’s side, he was again dealt a devastating blow. Son Beau, once Attorney General of Delaware, died aged 46 after falling ill with brain cancer. His younger son Hunter almost cost him the White House this time round . Trump accused him of wrongdoing in regards to Ukraine and China while acting as Obama’s deputy, which he vehemently denies. An alleged email surfaced in which an adviser from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma apparently thanked Hunter for inviting him to meet his father. Biden’s son was a director on the board. The allegations failed to derail Biden, who is now on the verge of becoming America’s oldest leader. Known for being one of the world’s most empathetic politicians, he hopes to heal the deeply divided States.