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By The Washington Post 
3h ago
By Felicia Sonmez
President Donald Trump signaled over the weekend that he will continue to challenge the 2020 election results, even after the electoral college meets in most state capitals on Monday to cast its votes.
In an interview with Fox News Channel that aired Sunday morning, Trump repeated his false allegations of voter fraud and said his legal team will continue to seek challenges despite the Supreme Court dismissing a remote offer led by the attorney general of Texas to overturn the four-state results that President-elect Joe Biden won.
“No, it’s not over,” Trump told host Brian Kilmeade in the interview, which was recorded Saturday at the Army-Navy game at the US Military Academy at West Point. “We keep going and we’re going to keep moving forward. We have numerous local cases. We are, you know, in some of the states that manipulated and robbed us. We won every one of them. Pennsylvania won. We won Michigan. We won Georgia by a lot.
Trump lost those swing states and others to Biden, who won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
Kilmeade noted that the electoral college will meet on Monday and the ballots will then be transmitted to Congress, which will officially count the votes on January 6. When asked how that process affects his chances of successfully challenging the results, Trump objected.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to speed it up as much as we can, but you can only go so fast. They give us very little time.”
When asked if he plans to attend Biden’s inauguration next month, Trump declined to respond.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
Public polls show that many Republican voters doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election, leading some observers to worry that Trump’s refusal to concede will further divide the country.
A CBS News poll released Sunday shows that 62 percent of registered voters believe the election is over and that it is time to move on.
But in particular, 75 percent of Republicans said they believe the election is not over and that it should still be contested. Only 18 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2020 said they consider Biden the rightful winner.
Attorney General William Barr, who was appointed by Trump, said earlier this month that he “has not seen fraud on a scale that could have had a different outcome in the election,” undermining Trump’s claims of major and widespread election irregularities. .
Still, the president has continued to make unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, calling the election “a sham and an embarrassment” and dismissing concerns that his actions are alienating Americans.
“No,” Trump told Kilmeade when asked if he shares those concerns. “I’m worried that the country has an illegitimate president. That’s what worries me. A president who lost and lost a lot. This wasn’t, like, a close election … I didn’t lose. The election was rigged.”
In contrast, the CBS News poll showed that Democratic voters do not view Republican victories in House and Senate elections as fraudulent.
Seventy-eight percent of Democrats, and 87 percent of registered voters overall, believe that Republicans legitimately won those elections.
More than half of the Republican House conference signed the Texas lawsuit that sought to annul the results of the elections in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. One of those House Republicans, Louisiana minority leader Steve Scalise, suggested Sunday morning that it will still be too early to call Biden president-elect even after the electoral college meets Monday.
“Let’s let the legal process unfold,” Scalise, the second Republican in the House, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “But if you want to restore the trust of millions of people who are still very frustrated and angry about what happened, that is why you have to make the whole system work.”
Few members of the Trump administration have also acknowledged Biden’s victory. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, like others, has repeatedly refused to call Biden president-elect. But during an interview on Sunday, he appeared to claim that a new administration will take office next month.
On CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” anchor Margaret Brennan asked Azar if he thinks a Biden administration will be able to meet the goal of 100 million coronavirus vaccines in the United States by the end of February.
“If they go ahead with the plans that we have put in place, 100 million gun shots by the end of February will be very far reaching,” Azar said.
Among the Republicans who have urged Trump to concede is former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who on Sunday criticized the president’s continued efforts to overturn the election results.
“The reason the Supreme Court doesn’t accept this is not for lack of courage,” Christie said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “It is for the same reason that all courts have ruled this out: it is a lack of evidence and a lack of any kind of legal theory that makes sense.”
Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, who will retire at the end of the year, said there should be no question after Monday about who won the presidential election.
“I mean, the states have counted, certified their votes,” Alexander said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “The courts have settled the disputes. It looks like the voters will vote for Joe Biden. And when they do, I hope he puts the country first – I mean, the president – who takes pride in his considerable accomplishments, congratulates the president. elected and helps him start off right, especially in the midst of this pandemic.
The senator added: “We must not waste a day in the transition to get the vaccine to all who need it.”
The Washington Post
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