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The duel for the presidency has yet to be decided: incumbent Donald Trump still sees himself as the winner of the US election. “If you count the legal votes, I win easily,” Trump said Thursday night (local time) at the White House in his first public appearance since election night.
“If illegal votes are counted, they can try to steal our elections from us,” Trump said, speaking once more of the alleged “fraud” without any proof. He criticized the fact that, to his detriment, the results of the polls were knowingly released before the elections. So far, Trump has provided no evidence to back up his claims that there was massive election fraud. Officials, experts, and observers have so far seen no evidence of this.
Several US television channels stopped broadcasting Trump’s appearance soon after. They apparently did not want to continue airing unproven fraud allegations there without rating, for example, MSNBC, which voiced the need to correct false statements by the president.
The president particularly attacked postal votes: “It’s amazing to see how these postal ballots are so one-sided. Trump was referring to the fact that most of his challenger Joe Biden’s supporters had taken the opportunity to vote by mail.
Trump announced that he wanted to defend himself en masse in court against a defeat: “There will be many trials. We cannot allow an election to be stolen in this way.” He left the room after just over a quarter of an hour without answering the journalists’ questions.
Vice President Mike Pence assured Trump of his support. He’s by the president’s side, Pence wrote on Twitter shortly after Trump wrapped up a press conference at the White House. At the same time, he wrote: “We have to count all legal votes.” He wrote “Legal” in capital letters.
Criticism from within
On the other hand, several members of his party harshly criticized Trump’s appearance. “There is no justification for the president’s comments tonight that are undermining our democratic process,” Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan tweeted.
“America counts the votes and we have to respect the results, as we always have. No choice or person is more important than our democracy,” Hogan continued.
In an interview with the PBS station, he accused Trump and his side of having prepared the ground for the current procedure – the questioning of the results – with warnings about voting by mail. Hogan is the president of the National Governors Association.
Congressman Adam Kinzinger asked that evidence be produced for the fraud charges and that they appear in court. “Stop spreading exposed misinformation … This is freaking out,” he wrote on Twitter.
Mary, Trump’s niece, made disparaging remarks about the Republican’s behavior after the US elections. “This is what it looks like when a loser loses,” he tweeted as his uncle gave the press conference at the White House.
Mary Trump, a doctor of psychology, had published a popular book before the election and warned against her uncle’s second term. In an interview with the German press agency, he said that his uncle was a pathological liar and a racist.
In a first post-election appearance, Donald Trump had already won the election victory Wednesday night, although no winner had yet been declared in several states. The Republican had also announced legal action up to the Supreme Court.
In a series of short messages on Twitter, Trump has since denounced alleged electoral fraud and called for the count to be stopped without any evidence. His team has already taken legal action against the charges in several states.
So far, no significant cases of voter fraud have been reported in the U.S. Trump had been claiming for months without evidence that the risk of fraud is higher with votes by mail and refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power in the event of defeat.
The president currently has only 214 of the 270 voters needed for a victory. As it stands, his challenger Joe Biden has at least 253 voters. Adding in the state of Arizona, where some media have already proclaimed Biden the winner, it adds up to 264.
In the states of Pennsylvania and Georgia, Trump’s head start is shrinking as more ballots received by mail are evaluated. Supporters of the Democratic Party had turned to vote-by-mail with more force than Republicans in view of the corona risk. In Pennsylvania, ballots that arrive up to three days after the November 3 election date must still be counted. The US Post had been working with delays in recent months.
