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WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s unprecedented attempt to challenge US election results turned into new chaos when he abruptly canceled a trip that was supposedly intended to show his grievances with an epic battlefield appearance of the Civil War in Gettysburg.
Officially, Trump had nothing on his agenda, but US media reports cited officials who said he was planning an impromptu trip there, his first outside the Washington area since losing his re-election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Secret Service agents had reportedly closed a hotel in the small Pennsylvania town, site of a turning point in the Civil War where President Abraham Lincoln’s north defeated secessionist forces from the south.
READ: Trump struck with a new coup in an attempt to nullify the results of the vote
A group of journalists gathered to escort Trump from the White House to Pennsylvania, but were told at the last minute that his trip was canceled.
According to CNN and other US media reports, Trump was planning to join his controversial attorney Rudy Giuliani and state Republicans who were holding an unofficial “hearing” on his fraud allegations in Gettysburg.
So far, Trump’s attorneys have not presented any substantial evidence of fraud and national election officials say there was none.
Biden won Pennsylvania by a margin of 80,000 votes on November 3, helping him achieve a convincing victory at the national level and making Trump a single-term president.
– Trump’s next presidential race? –
Trump, who broke countless rules during his four years in power, is carving out new territory with his refusal to give in to Biden, while supporters suggest he is already waiting for an announcement to run for president again in 2024.
Building your brand before a new campaign could be one explanation for the real estate mogul’s stubborn pursuit of such a lost cause.
Giuliani and other Trump attorneys have seen unfounded challenges to vote counts rejected by courts across the country.
And while Trump alleges, among other conspiracy theories without evidence, that voting machines deliberately erased millions of their votes, the government’s election security agency declared this election “the safest” in US history.
After coming under pressure from a slowly building trickle from senior Republicans, Trump on Monday ended his blockade of government assistance to facilitate Biden’s preparation to take office on January 20.
But Trump has yet to take the simplest steps in normal post-election protocol, starting with a phone call to Biden.
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“No, I have not heard from President Trump,” Biden told NBC News.
Given Trump’s threats before the election not to acknowledge the results, Biden told NBC that “he is not surprised by the president’s response.”
Since the election, Trump has largely disappeared from his regular work schedule and has not once answered questions from journalists.
However, adding to the feeling that he is focused on preparing his next political event, he continues to raise money from supporters who contribute to an “Official Electoral Defense Fund.”
Much of that money does not go to the lawyers promoting his fraud allegations, but instead is funneled to pay off the debts of the 2020 campaign and build a future war chest with Trump’s political action committee.
Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for Biden, said the outgoing president was now the last person to accept the reality of the election.
“Virtually everyone on Earth has accepted that truth, except Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani,” he said.
“The Trump campaign has been the subject of ridicule in every court, with its meritless and baseless lawsuits aimed at undermining the will of the American people. This is a sideshow.”
