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For 40 hours, President Donald Trump privately enraged and tweeted his complaints in capital letters.
When he finally emerged, it was to stand behind the presidential seal in the White House and deliver a tirade most notable for his litany of false statements about the elections and his attempt to cast doubt on the integrity of the democratic process.
As the votes continued to be counted and Democrat Joe Biden edged closer to victory, Trump lashed out Thursday night (local time) in a performance that suggested he knew his prospects for a second term were fading.
“If you count the legal votes, I win easily. If they count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us, ”Trump said. In fact, there is no evidence that illegally cast votes are being counted or that the process is unfair and corrupt.
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The vote counting process in the US has run largely smoothly and without evidence of fraud or widespread problems.
Trump delivered his statement to reporters in the White House meeting room and left without answering questions. It came after Trump and his allies spent a second day watching and waiting with the rest of the nation as vote totals pushed further in Biden’s direction on some key battlefields.
With only a handful of states yet to decide, Biden had a clear advantage over Trump, but the president still had a narrow path toward the 270 electoral votes needed to win re-election. The Associated Press has not declared a winner, and it could take several more days for the vote count to complete and a clear winner to emerge.
Evan Vucci / AP
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House. “If you count the legal votes, I win easily,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, many of the last votes to be counted are mail-in ballots, which take longer to process and overwhelmingly favor Democrats. Trump’s voters were much more likely to vote in person after the president spent months criticizing the vote-by-mail.
Before Thursday night, Trump had not been seen in public since his baseless declaration of victory early Wednesday morning.
Since then, the mood in the White House has changed dramatically. Some West Wing aides have wearyly watched returns, losing confidence that leading states would break Trump’s path.
Trump spent the past two days monitoring the results and calling out allies, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. White House spokesman Judd Deere said the president was “working,” but declined to elaborate.
Trump’s concern over the election results was evident in his tweets throughout the day.
“STOP THE COUNT!” proclaimed. But the president has no authority over the counting of votes, and stopping the counting at that point would have resulted in a quick victory for Biden.
“ANY VOTE GIVEN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!” wrote later. That seemed to advocate casting countless legally cast votes, including those of service members stationed overseas. Many states accept mail-in ballots after Election Day as long as they are postmarked Nov. 3.
Trump’s capitalized remarks had the tone of a last stand from a man who hates losing. They reflected a last-minute legal effort undertaken by his campaign on several key and indecisive battlefields that was largely dismissed by experts as superficial and unlikely to change the outcome in any significant way.
Still, Trump’s team outwardly expressed optimism.
“Donald Trump is alive and well,” Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a call with reporters Thursday morning. He predicted that Trump would win Pennsylvania and other states that were too early to call.
Behind the scenes, however, the atmosphere was bleaker, with the White House and campaign personnel glued to television screens and watching the results. Some in the west wing were almost resigned to the idea of a Trump loss and have been discussing future employment. prospects even as others continue to make unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud.
Many senior White House officials and Republicans were unaware of what Trump planned to say in his evening address. And privately, some expressed dismay that Trump was publicly undermining faith in the democratic process.
Biden himself responded: “No one is going to take away our democracy. Not now, not never “.
After delivering his statement, the president paused at the White House press office behind the meeting room for a few minutes and appeared to be watching their coverage live on television.
Trump had no other public events Thursday. And he made no reference to the growing coronavirus pandemic, as new confirmed positive cases hit an all-time high.
Biden received a private briefing on the virus on Thursday afternoon before leaving to tell the American public to be patient while waiting for the election results.
The Trump campaign was sending loyalists like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former National Intelligence Director Ric Grenell to hold press conferences in states where legal challenges are mounting.
The campaign also bombarded supporters with fundraising messages warning of unfounded Democratic efforts to “steal” the result. The effort had raised more than $ 10 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly. At least part of the money went to pay off the general election debt.
The president’s allies, including his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, took to Twitter to call what the younger Trump tagged: “The utter inaction of virtually all ‘2024 GOP hopefuls.’
“They have a perfect platform to show that they are willing and able to fight, but instead they will cower from the media mafia,” he wrote.
Trump Jr, who has also been discussed as a possible future candidate, made it clear that the family has no interest in quietly waiting for the votes to be counted.
“The best thing for America’s future is that @realDonaldTrump goes to all-out war for this election to expose all the fraud, cheating, dead / no more voters in the states, that has been going on for far too long,” he wrote . “It’s time to clean up this mess and stop looking like a banana republic!”
