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By The Washington Post 
3h ago
Washington – President Donald Trump vowed on Friday that he will continue to fight the election results, privately urging his allies and advisers to defend him publicly and insisting that he still has a path to victory over former Vice President Joe Biden.
But behind the scenes for the past two days, aides have raised with the president the possibility of an electoral defeat and how he should handle that outcome, said two people familiar with the discussions.
Some close to the president are defending that if Biden is declared the winner of the presidential election, Trump will finally offer public comments committing himself to a peaceful transition of power, according to Republican allies and officials, who like others spoke on Friday. on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. However, a senior campaign aide said a concession speech had not been discussed.
Trump is unlikely to back down in the traditional sense, the allies said, delivering the kind of gracious and magnanimous speech the nation has come to expect at the end of even the most fierce presidential races. If he loses, these people added, they expect Trump to continue to claim unsubstantiated, as he has for several days, that the election was stolen.
Since Election Day, the president has acknowledged a few advisers that he faces an uphill battle, but has argued that it is still a battle worth having.
Still, some in Trump’s orbit have worked to calm the president down and help push him toward what many privately acknowledge is an increasingly likely outcome: the loss of the White House, for a man who has made it clear that He hates losing almost above all.
After an angry appearance in the White House meeting room Thursday night in which he questioned the legitimacy of the election results, attendees convinced the president on Friday to release a more measured statement on vote counting in course and refrain from making public appearances.
The statement issued through his campaign called for “full transparency in all vote counting and certification of elections,” saying that the fight “is no longer about a single election.”
“I will never stop fighting for you and our nation,” the president concluded.
A person close to the campaign described the statement as “a small step away from challenge and towards possible loss.”
Trump has spent the week speaking to a circle of longtime advisers and allies, several officials said, including Kellyanne Conway, his former adviser who left the White House in late August; Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney; Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior advisor; Vice President Mike Pence; The president of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel; White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; former chief of staff Reince Priebus; and his campaign team.
His allies are still divided into two main factions: a group, led by the president and his family, who still believe they have a path to victory and must keep fighting; and another larger group of Republican advisers and officials who believe the presidency has almost escaped.
Yet even those who now believe that Biden’s victory is a foregone conclusion have struggled with how to break the news to Trump. “They know he’s lost, but no one seems willing to tell King Lear or Mad King George that they have lost the empire,” said a Republican in frequent contact with the White House.
And so Trump spent much of Friday in the Oval Office, watching election updates on the cable news and calling on allies and advisers to implore them to “fight and defend me,” someone familiar with the conversations said.
Since Election Day, the President has called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Several times, but he has been remarkably calm, simply updating the Republican leader on the election results and explaining why. thinks he can still win, according to a different person familiar with the conversations.
Meanwhile, Meadows has repeatedly told Trump that there is a road to victory left in critical Pennsylvania, a claim repeated by campaign manager Bill Stepien.
Kushner called allies Thursday and Friday to explain that the campaign had legal teams deployed in each of the disputed states, how they viewed the results so far, and what the path to victory was. But one person who spoke to Kushner described him as “compartmentalized” and “professional,” and seemed to understand that the Trump campaign could still fall short.
An ally who spoke to the president on Thursday said Trump’s adult children seemed more angry at the prospect of loss than Trump himself. That same day, Trump’s two oldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric, took to Twitter to criticize Republicans for not doing more to publicly defend and fight for their father. And after the president’s family demanded action, the campaign established a hotline for people to call to report allegations of voter fraud.
The campaign also chose David Bossie, a Trump adviser who is not an attorney, to lead the team’s legal effort to challenge the results in several key states. Bossie did not respond to requests for comment. However, with the recriminations and finger-pointing already beginning, some advisers complained that the president’s team, and Kushner in particular, should have prepared a more legal strategy.
Advisers said that legal strategy so far appeared to be more related to public relations and politics. Advisers were divided on whether the strategy was serious and long-term or was only meant to kill a few days until the president “feels better and moves on,” in the words of a top Trump adviser.
Attendees were primarily focused on Pennsylvania and Arizona, several officials said, and Trump was complaining to others about being behind in Georgia, which he believed was firmly on their side, the adviser said.
On Thursday, Trump Jr. visited the Georgia Republican Party headquarters in Atlanta, rallying the “Make America Great Again” faithful to keep hope. “Everybody knows it: Donald Trump is a fighter,” said Trump Jr. “And we’re going to fight each and every one of these. Georgia, it’s going to be important.”
On Friday, McDaniel appeared on Fox News to underscore the president’s concerns – “We’ve seen a lot of wrongdoing,” he said – before flying to Georgia, which is heading for a recount.
Other senior White House officials attempted to support Trump publicly while projecting a sense of normalcy and assuring the public that the administration would ultimately accept the final results of the election. Aides to the vice president, who has not spoken publicly since election night, were trying to ensure that Pence appeared to support Trump’s efforts and avoid being overly aggressive.
“I’m with President @realDonaldTrump,” Pence tweeted on Thursday. “We must count every LEGAL vote.”
I am with the president @realDonaldTrump. We must count every LEGAL vote.
– Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) November 6, 2020
Senior economic adviser Larry Kudlow, speaking on CNBC on Friday, said he expected “a peaceful transfer of power.”
“This is a great country,” Kudlow said. “This is the largest democracy in the world, and we are governed by the rule of law, just like this president.”
Some advisers have also been talking about how to spin a potential defeat, arguing that Trump could still pull off a victory lap, taking comfort in the fact that, even in a deadly pandemic, he exceeded expectations, likely helped the Senate maintain its majority. Republican and won Republican seats in the House.
This is not a referendum on you, the president has been told.
Pence hinted at that issue in another tweet Thursday, writing that he had spoken with more than 20 Republican lawmakers to congratulate them “on their historic victories by huge margins across the country,” hinting that it would not have been possible without the president’s help. .
“Thanks to President @realDonaldTrump, we have strong conservatives fighting for the American people in Washington,” Pence tweeted.
Today I spoke with more than 20 @GOP members to congratulate them on their historic high-margin victories across the country, including many women! Thank you president @realDonaldTrumpWe have strong conservatives fighting for the American people in Washington. pic.twitter.com/ZSvA6dtBpv
– Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) November 6, 2020
Despite the uncertainty, the majority in Trump’s orbit said they believe it is highly unlikely that, if he loses, Trump will simply refuse to leave the White House, as many Democrats have feared. One ally dismissed the concern as “a liberal fever dream.”
Instead, they are confident that Trump will eventually leave the White House without explicitly acknowledging defeat.
One Republican close to the campaign chuckled as they imagined a possible future six months from now: Biden as president, with Trump still complaining, “It was stolen from me.”
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