San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Trump refusing to give up battle as legal fight fails
WASHINGTON — President Trump is aware his fight to overturn the election is winding down, according to people familiar with the matter, but he isn’t ready to end the effort as he raises funds off the furor, directing much of the proceeds to his political action committee.
Still, Trump appears to be staking out a path that will end with him departing the White House without ever formally conceding to Democrat Joe Biden. He’s continuing to insist that the result was “rigged” as he plots his next steps.
The president has salted a string of hints into recent remarks that he’s coming to grips with the reality Biden will be the next president. On Thursday, taking questions from reporters for the first time since election day, Trump actually uttered the words “Biden administration.”
But he still indignantly insisted that he actually won the election while also signaling he’d accept his fate as the first oneterm president since George H. W. Bush. “Certainly I will,” Trump said when asked if he would leave the White House upon Biden’s inauguration.
Trump’s circle of campaign advisers has shrunk to his most diehard loyalists, chiefly
Rudy Giuliani, said people familiar with the matter. His campaign apparatus has begun shutting down, and his campaign manager hasn’t held a press call in three weeks.
Trump realizes that he faces nearly impossible odds in reversing the results of the election, said Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist who worked on the president’s 2016 campaign.
“He’s a realist in that respect. That doesn’t make the pain any easier and it doesn’t make the suspicion any less,” Bennett said. Trump and his most ardent supporters will continue to doubt the legitimacy of the election, he said.
Trump’s legal challenges have almost uniformly flopped. He was dealt a new blow on Friday in Pennsylvania by a threejudge panel, all Repub
licans, who rejected his bid to overturn certification of the state’s election results.
Yet Trump still rejects the results. On Friday, he demanded in a tweet that Biden “prove” the 80 million votes cast for him were legitimate. In fact, as each successive state’s election authorities certify their results, that proof is accumulating.
The Electoral College is to vote on Dec. 14. Certificates recording the electoral vote results in each state must be received by the president of the Senate no later than Dec. 23. Biden already is certified as the winner, or leading, in states totaling 306 electoral votes, well above the victory threshold of 270. Among the states scheduled to certify this week are Arizona and Wisconsin.
Trump will return to the campaign trail this week with rally in Georgia on Satuday for Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, incumbent Republicans facing runoffs elections on Jan. 5.