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President Donald Trump backed off after appearing Sunday to first acknowledge that Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 election, saying he conceded “nothing” and repeating his unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.
Biden defeated Trump by winning a series of states on the battlefield that the Republican president had won in 2016. The former Democratic vice president also won the national popular vote by more than 5.5 million votes, or 3.6 percentage points.
Trump made his contradictory statements in a series of Twitter posts.
“He won because the election was rigged,” Trump wrote Sunday morning, without referring to Biden by name. “NO OBSERVERS OR OBSERVERS VOTE ALLOWED, vote tabulated by a private Radical Left company, Dominion, with a bad reputation and team that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), The Fake & Silent Media, & more!”
About an hour later, Trump wrote: “He only won in the eyes of FAKE MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was an EQUIPPED ELECTION!”
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Biden’s choice for White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said: “Donald Trump’s Twitter does not make Joe Biden president or non-president. The people American did that. “
The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits seeking to overturn the results in several states, albeit without success, and legal experts say the litigation has little chance of altering the election outcome.
Election officials from both parties have said there is no evidence of major wrongdoing. Democrats and other critics have accused Trump of trying to delegitimize Biden’s victory and undermine public confidence in the American electoral process. Before the election, Trump had refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
Trump’s refusal to budge did not change the fact that Biden was president-elect, but it has stalled the administration’s normal process of preparing for a new presidential administration.
The Trump administration’s decision not to recognize Biden as the winner has prevented Biden and his team from gaining access to government office space and funds normally awarded to an incoming administration to ensure a smooth transition.
The federal agency in charge of providing those resources, the General Services Administration, has yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory.
‘ABSOLUTELY UNPLEASANT ‘
Senator Bernie Sanders, one of Biden’s main challengers for the Democratic presidential nomination, criticized Trump’s post-election conduct.
“Trump will have the distinction of doing more than anyone in the history of this country to undermine American democracy. The idea that he continues to tell his supporters that the only reason he could have lost this election was fraud is absolutely disgraceful. “Un-American thing to do,” Sanders told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
Biden has spent days huddled with advisers as he weighs cabinet appointments, receives congratulatory calls from world leaders and maps out the policies he will pursue after taking office on January 20. He is expected to continue meeting with advisers privately on Sunday.
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