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Increasingly removed from reality, United States President Donald Trump stood before a White House lectern and delivered a 46-minute tirade against the election results that produced a victory for Democrat Joe Biden, unmasking a statement. wrong after another to back up his unfounded claim that he actually won.
Trump called his speech, published on Wednesday (local time) only on social media and without an audience, perhaps “the most important speech” of his presidency.
But it was largely a recycling of the same litany of misinformation and unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud that he has been making for the past month.
Trump, who spoke from the Diplomatic Room, maintained his futile rejection of the election even as state after state certifies his results and as Biden goes ahead with his cabinet setup before his January 20 inauguration.
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DONALD TRUMP / FACEBOOK
Donald Trump delivered a 46-minute speech against the election results.
Biden received a record 81 million votes compared to Trump’s 74 million. The Democrat also won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
The Electoral College split coincides with Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton four years ago, which he described then as a “landslide.”
Trump delved into his claim of a “rigged election” despite members of his own administration, including Attorney General William Barr, saying no evidence of widespread voter fraud has been discovered.
Courts in various states on the battlefield have thrown out a number of lawsuits filed on behalf of the president.
“It’s not just about honoring the votes of the 74 million Americans who voted for me,” Trump said. “It’s about ensuring that Americans can have faith in this election. And in all future elections ”.
In fact, their baseless claims are having the opposite effect: undermining public faith in the integrity of the United States. elections.
About an hour after it was posted, Trump’s video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook and shared by more than 60,000 Facebook users.
Both Facebook and Twitter pointed to the president’s post as problematic, and Twitter noted that Trump’s claims about voter fraud are in dispute.
Many of Trump’s claims have been repeatedly debunked in recent weeks.
His blanket statement: “This election is about major electoral fraud, a fraud that has never been seen like this before.”
Indeed, Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, expressed his confidence in the integrity of the elections ahead of the November vote. And then he rejected allegations that the count was tainted by fraud.
Krebs was fired by Trump weeks ago.
Barr, in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, said the Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.
Trump, in his speech, delved into a number of unsubstantiated claims about voting in battle states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and more.
It alleged that in Pennsylvania, “large quantities of absentee mail-in ballots were illegally and secretly processed in Philadelphia and Allegheny County without the presence of our observers.”
In fact, no one tried to ban the poll watchers representing each side in the elections. And the Democrats did not try to prevent Republican representatives from observing the process.
The main question was how close observers representing parties could get to poll workers processing mail-in ballots in Philadelphia. The Trump campaign sued to allow observers to get closer than the guidelines allowed. A court ruled in favor of that request.
Trump also focused on the high use of vote-by-mail ballots this year, citing the “relentless drive by the Democratic Party to print and mail tens of millions of ballots sent to unknown recipients with virtually no protection of any kind.”
In fact, vote-by-mail ballots have a number of built-in safeguards to verify the identity of voters and prevent fraud. Some states mail ballots to all registered voters, while other states mail ballots only to voters who request them. But the ballots are subject to that state’s verification requirements in any case.
The use of mail-in ballots skyrocketed this year as Democrats encouraged their use to reduce in-person voting during a pandemic.
