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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Joe Biden hit the two-week mark on Saturday since he became president-elect, and President Donald Trump suffered consecutive setbacks in his desperate and unprecedented attempt to reverse his electoral defeat.
Biden, a Democrat, is preparing to take office on January 20, but Trump, a Republican, has refused to budge and seeks to invalidate or nullify the results through lawsuits and recounts in various states, claiming, without proof, widespread. electoral fraud.
That effort, which critics call an unrivaled push by a sitting president to subvert the will of the voters, has met with little success. Trump’s campaign has suffered a series of legal defeats and appears to have failed to convince his fellow key Republicans in the states he lost, such as Michigan, to buy into his baseless conspiracy theories.
Trump’s bid to hold onto power seemed increasingly tenuous Friday after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that a manual recount and audit of all ballots cast in the southern state confirmed Biden as the winner there.
A pair of Michigan Republican leaders took another blow when they declared Friday night after a White House meeting with Trump: “We have not yet learned of any information that will change the outcome of the Michigan election.”
Trump, in his first public comment in days on the election result, again claimed that I “won” during an event at the White House on lowering drug prices on Friday.
After a series of court losses, Trump’s team is hopeful that Republican-controlled legislatures in Biden-won battle states will sideline the results and declare Trump the winner, according to three people familiar with it. with the plan.
It’s a long-term effort that focuses on Michigan and Pennsylvania for now, but even if both states changed the president, he would have to override the vote in another state to jump ahead of Biden in the Electoral College.
Such an event would be unprecedented in modern American history.
PRESSURE TO INITIATE FORMAL TRANSITION
Biden, who became president-elect Nov. 7 after his victory in Pennsylvania led major television networks to call the elections, was supposed to spend Saturday meeting with vice president-elect Kamala Harris and transition advisers.
Trump will participate virtually this weekend in the last summit of the 20 largest world economies (G20) of his term.
Trump’s “America First” nationalist approach has often created waves at multilateral summits like the G20, and many US allies have quietly welcomed the upcoming leadership change in Washington.
Pressure for Trump to begin the formal transition process has mounted, with some more Republicans expressing doubts about his unfounded claims of fraudulent voting.
There is a “right way and a wrong way” for Trump to challenge what he sees as electoral irregularities, said Susan Collins, the Maine senator, in a statement. “The right way is to collect the evidence and present legal challenges in our courts. The wrong way is to try to pressure state election officials.”
The General Services Administration, led by a Trump appointee, has yet to acknowledge Biden’s victory, preventing his team from gaining access to government office space and funds normally provided to an incoming administration.
Critics say Trump’s refusal to concede has serious implications for national security and the fight against the coronavirus, which has killed more than 250,000 Americans.
With no government funding, Biden’s team increased its fundraising for the transition on Friday. Having received more than an initial $ 7 million goal largely from wealthy donors, they turned to their campaign’s vast mailing list of small donors and asked, according to a fundraising note, for contributions as small as $ 25.
Despite the fact that Biden’s team remains unable to access government resources and experts to help take over the US government’s $ 4 trillion administration on inauguration day, Trump officials have made unexpected changes to programs, policies. and agencies that could affect the incoming administration.
The Treasury Department’s surprise demand that the Federal Reserve repay hundreds of billions of dollars in loans designed to back business loans drew a strong response from Biden’s team on Friday, calling it “deeply irresponsible,” given the Increasingly accelerated COVID cases and new blockades. .
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