PHOTOS | Spurred By False Fraud Claims, Trump Supporters Demonstrate In Washington

• Thousands of supporters of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, demonstrated in Washington, DC, promoting the discredited theory that fraud denied him legitimate victory in the elections.
• With US election officials rebutting allegations of voter fraud, the US president spent the past week trying to fight this in court.
• In the pictures, White House protesters held high flags and banners heading to the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill.

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Tens of thousands of President Donald Trump supporters marched through central Washington on Saturday, echoing his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and cheering as his caravan passed.

A week after Democrat Joe Biden secured the election, Trump, a Republican, has refused to accept the result and has launched a series of dubious legal challenges to overturn the results. Election officials across the country have said they saw no evidence of serious wrongdoing.

With flags and chanting “stop the robbery,” protesters walked from Freedom Plaza near the White House to the US Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill as part of the “MAGA Million March,” in reference to Trump’s campaign mantra of “Make Americans Great Again.” . “

Trump’s motorcade briefly drove through the crowd on their way to his golf course in Sterling, Virginia. Protesters cheered as the president, wearing a red baseball cap emblazoned with the slogan, waved from inside the presidential limousine.

“They will not stand in a rigged and corrupt election!” Trump wrote on Twitter, saying that hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets. Police did not give the official size of the crowd, but witnesses said it was much smaller than Trump’s estimate.

Donald Tarca Jr., who traveled to Washington from West Palm Beach, Florida, was holding a huge American flag with a giant portrait of Trump.

“I think it was rigged on multiple fronts,” he said of the election. “Also, the media was so biased that they convinced millions of Americans to vote for Biden. They hate Trump.”

Dozens of members of the far-right group Proud Boys, mostly dressed in black and some in helmets and ballistic vests, were among the protesters. Some left-wing groups organized small counter-demonstrations, including members of the flexible movement known as antifa.

READ | What it will take for Trump to concede, according to a psychologist specializing in narcissism

Near the Supreme Court, some counter-protesters carried black umbrellas and makeshift shields, while others formed a line of bicycles to prevent pro-Trump protesters from approaching their group from the rear. They called Trump supporters “Nazis”; protesters yelled profanity about antifa.

Reuters witnessed at least half a dozen fights and several tense clashes, but the violence seemed isolated.

One person was stabbed and rushed to a trauma center, a spokeswoman for the city’s fire department and emergency medical services said. The Washington Post reported that the stabbing occurred amid an uproar among Trump supporters, some with batons and counter-protesters that erupted around 8 p.m.

The city’s police department had made 10 arrests by mid-afternoon, a spokeswoman told Reuters, including four for firearms violations, two for assault and one for assaulting an officer.

Biden spent the morning at his beach house in Delaware meeting with transition advisers, as he has done for much of the week, before returning to his home near Wilmington. The president-elect has largely ignored Trump’s repeated claims of fraud, instead focusing on preparing to rule and receiving congratulatory calls from world leaders.

During a bike ride Saturday morning with his wife, Jill, he answered “yes” when asked by a reporter if he was making progress in selecting Cabinet appointees.

‘TIME WILL TELL’

Despite his bluster on Twitter, Trump first began to sound doubtful about his prospects on Friday, telling reporters that “time will tell” who sits in the White House as of inauguration day.

“This administration will not go into a lockdown. Hopefully, uh, whatever happens in the future, who knows what administration it will be? I guess time will tell,” Trump said during his remarks on the coronavirus pandemic at an event. of the White House.

Biden won 306 votes to Trump’s 232 in the state-by-state Electoral College system that determines the winner, according to Edison Research, far more than the 270 needed to win the election. He also leads the national popular vote by more than 5.5 million votes, or 3.6%.

With the election results becoming clearer, Trump has discussed with his advisers possible companies and media appearances that would keep him in the limelight ahead of a possible 2024 run for the White House, his advisers said.

But his repeated accusations that the elections were “rigged” have inflamed his supporters and stalled the transition to a new administration.

The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several states with little success so far. Legal experts have said that the litigation is highly unlikely to alter the outcome of the elections.

States face a December 8 deadline to certify their elections and elect voters to the Electoral College, although many states have implemented earlier certification dates. The Electoral College meets to vote for the new president on December 14.

In light of Trump’s refusal to budge, the federal agency providing funding to an incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory, denying him access to federal office space and resources.

Biden’s election for White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said this week that a swift transition is necessary to ensure the government is prepared to roll out a potential coronavirus vaccine early next year.

The terrible pandemic will likely be Biden’s top priority. The United States set a new daily record for new cases on Friday for the fourth day in a row; More than 244,000 people in the country have died from the coronavirus since the pandemic began.

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