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US President Donald Trump has said he will leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden, the closest he has come to granting the November 3 election, even as he reiterated his unsubstantiated claims of massive electoral fraud.
Speaking to reporters on the Thanksgiving holiday, President Trump said that if Biden, who is due to be sworn in on January 20, is certified as the winner of the election by the Electoral College, he will leave the White House.
But Trump said it would be difficult for him to give in under the current circumstances and declined to say whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration. Voters are scheduled to meet on December 14.
“This election was a fraud,” he insisted, without offering concrete evidence of such voting irregularities.
Biden won the November 3 presidential election with 306 electoral college votes, many more than the 270 required, compared to 232 for Trump.
Biden also leads Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote count.
So far, Trump has refused to concede the election and continues to claim without evidence that the election was marred by widespread fraud, and that he and not Biden won them.
Both Biden and Trump stayed close to home to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the country.
Mr. Biden vacationed in the small coastal town of Rehoboth, Delaware, where he and his wife, Jill, have a vacation home. The Bidens will host their daughter Ashley Biden and her husband, Dr. Howard Kerin, for the holiday meal.
The former vice president, who appeared with his wife in a video message posted to his Twitter account on Thanksgiving, said his family usually holds a large gathering on Nantucket Island, off Massachusetts, but would remain in Delaware. this year “with only a small group. around our table” because of the pandemic.
In his presidential-style address to a nation that has lost more than 260,000 lives to the virus, the Democratic president-elect said Americans were making a “sacrifice shared by the entire country” and a “statement of common purpose” by staying. at home. with their immediate relatives.
“I know this is not the way many of us expected our vacations to be spent. We know that a little act of staying home is a gift to our compatriots,” Biden said. “I know better days are coming.”
Republican President Trump often likes to celebrate the holidays at his Mar-a-Largo resort in Florida. But on Thursday he remained in the Washington area, spending part of the morning at his Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, where he played a round of golf.
It was very different from last year when he made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he served turkey to American troops before sitting down to dinner with them on Thanksgiving.
This time, Trump spoke via video link from the White House to members of the military.
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