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Using the briefing room to defend unsubstantiated claims that he is being deprived of a second term for fraud, Trump challenged the democratic notion of a peaceful transition of power should Biden win. Instead, he suggested that he would fight in court until the election is decided in his favor.
“This is a case where they are trying to steal an election, they are trying to manipulate an election and we cannot allow that to happen,” Trump said in a stern and monotonous tone, without providing evidence and leaving the room without responding. for their false claims.
The spectacle, though heralded by the president for months, was nevertheless a sign of Trump’s unwillingness to give up the White House without a protracted battle. Even when complaining that his own career had been rigged, Trump used the occasion to tout victories in the vote against the Republicans without explaining why those races would not be similarly affected by his fraud allegations.
His message came as new counts show his lead is waning in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where mail-in ballots are still counted.
Trump spent the past six months denouncing the use of mail-in ballots, a strategy that even some Republicans feared would suppress their own totals. While Trump retains a path to 270 electoral votes, it has dropped by the hour.
The president had not been seen in public since his midnight speech Wednesday, when he falsely declared victory. Aides said Biden’s public appearances on Wednesday and Thursday, during which he called for patience and calm while the votes are counted, led Trump to push more to do the same, though some hoped to avoid the kind of speech that the president ultimately pronounced. .
Despite campaign assurances that the numbers will eventually break through, and despite the president’s apparent desire for a battle, reality was settling for several of Trump’s aides in the White House and campaign.
Senior advisers privately acknowledged that math was simply not on their side and they were bracing for a loss. Others privately acknowledged that Trump’s chances of winning now are slim and were contemplating his next career steps.
But that reality does not seem to have been established for the candidate himself. Before his appearance in the meeting room, Trump continued to make a series of phone calls throughout the night, upset that his leadership in some states had faded and convinced that Biden is stealing the presidency.
That included his two adult sons, who expressed frustration Thursday that more Republicans were not publicly backing the president in his battle to stop the vote counting.
“Where is the Republican Party? Our voters will never forget …” Eric Trump wrote. His older brother, Donald Trump Jr., accused the “2024 Republican Party hopefuls” of remaining silent in the effort.
After Trump’s appearance in the White House, it was unclear whether Republicans would remain by his side.
“There is no defense for the president’s comments tonight that undermine our Democratic process,” tweeted Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who has at times been critical of Trump. “The United States is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we have always done before. No election or person is more important than our democracy.”
But others stood their ground, including Vice President Mike Pence, who hadn’t been heard from since Trump falsely claimed victory on election night. “I’m with President @realDonaldTrump,” Pence tweeted. “We must count every LEGAL vote.”
Despite his own private skepticism about the effectiveness of his legal strategy, Trump has maintained the intention of fighting a protracted fight, considering it his only option. It was an attack that the president anticipated in advance, vowing to unleash his team of lawyers in the states where he was losing.
Yet it was a scattered effort that seemed designed more to undermine confidence in the election results and provide legal backing for Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud than to garner more votes.
In a morning tweet, Trump laid bare his intentions, even as his advisers insisted they weren’t trying to crack down on the vote.
“STOP THE COUNT!” he wrote around 9 a.m. ET, at which point the vote totals in key states were actually showing him behind Biden, meaning a break in the count would make him a one-term president.
Trump’s capitalized tweets from the White House residence were bolstered by his campaign’s public relations attempts and by his surrogates, who have made unsubstantiated claims that the election was riddled with fraud.
There has been no credible evidence of widespread electoral fraud in this year’s contest. But Trump’s rallying cry prompted some of his loyal supporters to flock to tabulation centers to demand that the count be stopped.
In public, Trump’s team continues to insist that his path to victory is possible and even probable.
“Donald Trump is alive and well,” campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters on a morning conference call.
Meanwhile, Trump has pressured his aides to come forward with more lawsuits – screw the legal position – and has personally instructed his adult children to come out and defend him by questioning the validity of the vote counts, multiple people said. familiar with the matter.
The president was also eager to speak publicly. While attendees considered that he would make a speech on Wednesday, it was ultimately decided not to because there was no clear message for him. Some advisers had also been working to plan events for the president to show him doing his job, but so far none have materialized.
By contrast, Biden made brief public comments in the past two days and on Thursday attended a coronavirus briefing alongside his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris.
For Trump, Wednesday was a frustrating time. Two key battlefields, Michigan and Wisconsin, were called out in Biden’s favor. The race tightened dramatically in Georgia and Pennsylvania, while in Arizona the president is narrowing his margin against Biden.
As Biden spoke to the cameras from near his home in Delaware, encouraging patience and at the same time expressing optimism, Trump remained out of sight. Instead, he angrily spent the day phoning Republican governors to demand updates and wondering why more wasn’t being done to aid his efforts, people familiar with the calls said. Trump spoke with the governors of Georgia, Arizona and Florida on Wednesday.
At the same time, he has sounded resigned at times in conversations with some of his allies, questioning whether his legal strategy would work and whether his team was up to the challenge of fighting in court, according to a person who spoke with him. In those conversations, Trump sounded tired and dejected, the people who spoke to him said. Despite his skepticism, the president has suggested he has no choice but to keep fighting.
Trump’s top lieutenants, including Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and senior adviser Jared Kushner, met Wednesday at his campaign headquarters in suburban Virginia to chart a way forward.
Other members of his team, including his son Eric Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, mobilized to Pennsylvania, which appears to be ground zero for the campaign’s legal efforts. Another team, including former US ambassador to Germany Ric Grennell, was in Nevada.
The Trump team has filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Michigan demanding that vote counting be halted until their observers have access to the process. The campaign also filed a lawsuit in Georgia alleging inadequate vote counting in a single county and has sued the Clark County, Nevada Recorder, challenging its process to observe ballot processing.
The Trump campaign also said it was asking the US Supreme Court to intervene in a pending case challenging a Pennsylvania state court decision that allowed ballots to be counted after Election Day. And he has demanded a recount in Wisconsin, though he can’t formally request it until the canvas is completed, which could go as late as November 17.
The various filings and requests amount to risky legal arguments, several legal analysts said, focusing on claims so thin or affecting such a small share of votes that they will not decide the presidential election.
“Admitting defeat is not a plausible reaction so soon after the election, so they throw a lot of Hail Mary lawsuits against the wall and hope something will stick,” said Ben Ginsberg, longtime Republican election attorney and contributor to CNN. He said the types of lawsuits brought by the Trump team are not indicative of a campaign that is feeling optimistic.
