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(CNN) – President Donald Trump closed his bid for a second term with a false warning that “cheating” in the key state of Pennsylvania could lead to violence on the streets. It was his latest attempt to tarnish the integrity of an election clash with Democrat Joe Biden that nearly 100 million Americans have already validated by casting early votes amid the pandemic.
Trump’s incendiary behavior threatened to exacerbate already fraught national tensions amid fears of civil unrest that prompted companies in some cities to cover their facilities. Trump will spend election night behind a tall iron fence that now rings in the White House.
The final act of the president’s campaign threatens to shake up a surreal election at a destabilizing moment in history, with the United States battling a once-in-a-century public health crisis, a consequent economic depression, and embroiled in a non-racial reckoning resolved. But the already massive turnout and the potential for new records to be set Tuesday suggest voters are taking their civic duty extraordinarily seriously.
Trump told reporters that a Supreme Court decision allowing Pennsylvania to count mail-in votes that arrive up to three days after the election would lead to cheating at a “very high level” and was “very dangerous.” In a subsequent tweet, labeled possibly misleading by Twitter, Trump warned that this could “induce violence in the streets.” At a rally in Wisconsin, he said the decision could “endanger our country.”
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His tactic was a fitting coda for nearly four years in office thus far, in which he has consistently stretched the pillars of American democracy almost to breaking point and a campaign in which he has repeatedly spread misinformation about a ‘rigged election. ».
Trump’s insistence that the election result should be known on election night is in fact unfounded. History has witnessed many elections in which it took several days to count and tabulate all the votes. In 2000, it took until mid-December for the disputed race between George W. Bush and Al Gore to be decided, which ended up on the Supreme Court.
Biden closed his campaign in Pittsburgh, criticizing Trump for carrying the “white flag of surrender” to a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and for his suggestion that he might fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the specialists in most respected infectious diseases in the world.
“I have a better idea: Let’s fire Trump and I’ll hire Fauci,” Biden said at a rally in which he said he was heading toward victory on Tuesday.
Biden enters Election Day with a wide lead in national popular vote polls and a narrower lead in tightly contested states that gives him several viable paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
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The president, perhaps looking for a good omen, ended his campaign as he did in 2016, with an evening rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He spent time reliving election night four years ago and predicted an even better night on Tuesday.
“Tomorrow we will have another beautiful victory,” Trump said.
“We are going to win the state of Michigan so easily,” the president said, before continuing to tout the “incredible” work he had done in handling the pandemic and listing a litany of complaints about the Russia investigation, the former FBI director James Comey and the Capitol Democrats.
Trump must lead the table in a series of states he won in 2016 like Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Ohio to set up a showdown in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, where Biden is trying to rebuild the Democratic “blue wall.”
The president’s campaign predicts that he will win a massive turnout on Election Day that will confuse the polls and achieve what would be an even more incredible victory than the one he achieved over Hillary Clinton.
But the president is further behind Biden in key contested states than four years ago and must win almost all of them.
Federal judge in Texas backs down the Republican Party
The president’s latest attempts to cast doubt on the integrity of the election followed his previous warnings that if he loses, it will be fraudulent, and his false claims that voting by mail is corrupt. Those claims came in the context of Republican efforts to contest the votes and make it difficult to vote.
A second Texas judge, this time in federal court, ruled Monday against an effort by a group of Republicans to invalidate 127,000 votes cast at self-service venues in Harris County, a Democratic power base in a state that Biden thinks he can remove the president.
The Trump campaign has signaled that it could declare victory Tuesday night if it is ahead in enough states, even though millions of votes cast by Democrats may not be counted. Biden’s campaign insists that the state of the race is such that it will be impossible for the president to emerge as the winner on Tuesday due to extended vote counts.
As Trump sought to invalidate the election, nearly 100 million American voters who have already cast their early votes and by mail challenged the pandemic to do their duty as citizens and deliver a verdict on the most disruptive and divisive presidency of the modern era.
In a remarkable display of voter energy, some states, including the battlefields of Arizona and Nevada, have already surpassed their 2016 turnout totals before Election Day. If another 50 million or more show up to vote on Tuesday, the United States could break its record for total votes, set four years ago.
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A historical moment
Tuesday’s election is a turning point in American history. Trump is likely to become even more unbridled if he wins a second term in office and has largely given up fighting the worst public health crisis in 100 years in favor of an aggressive effort to get the economy roaring again. all machine.
He is running on a platform of prolonged external hostility to Washington, touting his success in putting three new conservative justices on the Supreme Court, boosting military spending, and cutting corporate and personal taxes.
“For the past four years, the depraved swamp has tried everything to stop me … but they know, I don’t answer to them, I answer to you,” Trump told voters during his latest campaign.
Biden vows to restore compassion and moral leadership in the White House and attack the pandemic that has killed 230,000 Americans head-on, while aiming to restore the “soul” of a nation whose racial and social divisions have been exploited by Trump.
The veteran Democrat says he will only raise taxes on Americans who earn more than $ 400,000 a year and vows to save Obamacare, which faces its last appointment with destiny before the Supreme Court next week.
The final day of the campaign saw Biden make a play for Ohio, a state Republicans were sure was safe for Trump, with a trip to Cleveland, where Democrats feel a large minority stake could change the state to their own. favor.
“It’s time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home. We end the chaos. We end racism and we end tweets, anger, failure, irresponsibility, ”Biden said.
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Trump traveled through North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He held his penultimate rally in Kenosha in Badger state, a city that was rocked by protests after the August shooting of Jacob Blake by police. Trump renewed his culture war rhetoric and claims he would restore law and order.
“They are waging war against our police,” said Trump, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap and a coat to protect himself from the cold, over the Democrats. He also claimed that Biden’s supporters would “loot and riot tomorrow if they don’t get their way.”
Democrats also sent former President Barack Obama on a mission to Georgia, another state that Trump won in 2016 but which Democrats believe they can take away from the Republican Party for the first time since 1992. Obama criticized the administration for wanting to fire the only one. person, Fauci, who could help end the pandemic.
