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WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrat Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump in the potentially decisive state of Pennsylvania on Friday, putting him on the brink of victory in an increasingly tense race for the White House.
Pennsylvania, and its 20 electoral votes, would be enough for Biden, 77, to exceed the magic number of 270 votes in the Electoral College, which determines the presidency.
With tens of thousands of votes to be counted, many of them from heavily Democratic areas, Biden opened a 5,500-vote lead over the incumbent Republican, state election results showed in real time.
Biden currently has at least 253 electoral votes and leads in three other states, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, where votes continue to be counted from Tuesday’s hard-contested election.
However, with his re-election hopes fading, Trump makes it clear that he is not ready to accept defeat, launching unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and claiming that he won.
“This election is not over,” his campaign said, after word broke of Biden’s leadership in Pennsylvania.
In an extraordinary appearance at the White House on Thursday, Trump himself claimed he had been conned into reelection.
“They are trying to steal the election,” Trump said.
With a Biden victory increasingly likely, the US Secret Service increased its protective bubble around the former vice president, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
The Secret Service sent an additional squad of agents to Biden’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, the newspaper said.
The Secret Service, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security, is charged with protecting the White House and senior government officials, visiting senior officials, and others.
‘Dangerous and wrong’
Trump did not provide evidence or respond to journalists’ questions, spending nearly 17 minutes making inflammatory statements about the country’s democratic process, of a kind never heard before from a US president.
According to Trump, the Democrats were using “illegal votes” to “steal our elections.”
“If you count the legal votes, I win easily,” he said.
“They are trying to manipulate an election. And we cannot allow that to happen. “
Trump repeated those claims in a tweet early Friday.
Trump’s rhetoric came as his campaign aggressively challenged the integrity of the large number of ballots mailed rather than cast in person on Election Day.
The big shift to postal ballots this year reflected voters’ desire to avoid the risk of exposure to Covid-19 in crowded polling stations during a pandemic that has already killed an estimated 235,000 Americans.
Mail-in ballots have leaned heavily toward Democrats.
In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign moved to stop the counting of votes, which authorities were prohibited from processing before Election Day.
Several major US television networks cut live coverage of Trump’s event at the White House over concerns that he was spreading disinformation, and there were signs of cracks in support within his Republican Party.
Rep. Will Hurd called Trump’s call to stop the vote counting “dangerous and wrong,” while Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post said Trump’s allegations were “unfounded.”
“There is no defense for the president’s comments tonight that undermine our democratic process,” said Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.
“No choice or person is more important than our democracy.”
But several prominent Republicans joined Trump, noting that they could challenge the legitimacy of the results if the president loses.
“I think everything should be on the table,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said when Fox News anchor and Trump loyalist Sean Hannity asked whether Pennsylvania’s Republican-led legislature should decline to certify the results.
Powerful Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made a more nuanced statement.
“This is how this should work in our great country: Every legal vote must be counted,” McConnell said.
“Any ballot sent illegally should not do so.
“All parties must come to observe the process. And the courts are here to enforce the laws and resolve disputes. This is how the votes of the Americans decide the outcome. “
‘Keep calm’
Biden, who has vowed to heal a country hit by Trump’s four-year polarization in power, has called for “the people to remain calm.”
In addition to Pennsylvania, Biden also leapt ahead of Trump overnight in the once-trusted Republican state of Georgia, by about 1,000 votes.
In Arizona and Nevada, Biden had few leads.
The victories in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania would give Biden 306 of the 538 Electoral College votes, the exact number Trump won in his stunning 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.
The Trump campaign has filed a host of lawsuits in battlefield states challenging the results, and the president’s supporters have staged protests in front of various vote counting centers.
Outside an election office in Phoenix, the Arizona capital, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones roused a heavily armed crowd, shouting into a megaphone about Trump’s alleged enemies: “They will be destroyed because America is on the rise. “.
Bob Bauer, a lawyer for Biden’s campaign, has dismissed the large number of Trump campaign lawsuits as “without merit.”
