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Caravans with Trump supporters head to Washington DC to support the president. But Trump no longer seems so sure he hasn’t lost.
“We’ll see who comes back in January,” President Donald Trump said in the White House’s Rose Garden. Photo: AP / NTB scanpix
Police in the US capital prepared on Saturday to receive a caravan of Trump supporters from Texas. Police in riot gear stormed a demonstration on Friday, taking hundreds of protesters away by truck.
– We see on social media that someone has planned to bring firearms to our city. But carrying firearms is prohibited in all areas where the demonstrations will take place, Police Chief Peter Newsham told NBC.
More than a dozen groups have announced their participation. Among other things, “Women for Trump” has plans to march to the Supreme Court building. Up to 70 percent of Republican voters do not believe the election was free and fair, according to a poll. According to Reuters, far-right groups such as the American Nationals and the Proud Boys have also announced their arrival in Washington.
Trump supporters in Washington yesterday. More are expected today. But there is great uncertainty about how many will mobilize for Trump despite the electoral defeat. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin / AP
I didn’t mention Biden
On Saturday night Norwegian time, Donald Trump called his first press conference since the November 3 election. Did he intend to admit defeat anyway, a week and a half into overtime?
The answer was no. Trump did not speak at all about the election. He spoke about the work of developing vaccines against covid-19. Without the efforts of the Trump administration, it would have taken three to five years, not ten months, to get the vaccine, according to Trump.
The name of the election winner, Joe Biden, was not mentioned in the press conference. Then a couple of sentences slipped out of Trump that could indicate that he’s not so confident about keeping his job anyway.
“Whatever happens in the future, any administration comes back in January. Time will tell, but what I can say is that this administration will not introduce closure,” said the president.
There was no need for more headlines to appear in the American media that could be sliding toward recognition of defeat. “For a brief moment in the rose garden, it might appear that the president is still realizing that his time at work is up,” CNN wrote.
A Trump supporter in Orange County, California, has refused to allow Joe Biden to steal the election. Photo: Paul Bersebach / Orange County Register / NTB scanpix
I lost in Georgia and Arizona
The tradition after the American presidential election is that the loser calls the winner and acknowledges his defeat. But this is highly unlikely for Donald Trump. For a week and a half, instead, he clung to the assumption that victory was stolen from him.
But the pressure is mounting on Trump, who has so far been unable to produce any documentation of electoral fraud:
- Biden was declared the winner by Georgia on Friday by CNN and other news organizations. A hand count is already in progress, as the distance between the candidates was less than half a percentage point. But Biden now has a 306-232 majority in the electoral college that formally elects the president on December 14.
- Several of the lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, alleging irregularities in the counting of votes, have already been rejected. Last Friday, Trump received three court rulings against him in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to The New York Times.
- A law firm that was to sue Trump in the state of Pennsylvania withdrew from the assignment. A major email campaign has been launched for people to financially support the work of these lawsuits. But half of the funds that go into this campaign can be used to pay off the election campaign debt, writes the USA Today newspaper.
- More and more Trump party colleagues have come out to warn not to put too much stick in the wheels of Joe Biden and his associates. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly describes denying Biden access to classified information as unjustifiable.
Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, sees no reason to procrastinate by briefing Biden. Photo: AP / NTB scanpix
“The delay in transition is a growing national health and security crisis. It costs the incumbent administration nothing to inform Biden, Harris, the new chief of staff and all designated government members and senior staff, it said in a statement. written by Kelly.
Friday infection log
The corona pandemic shows no signs of flattening out, on the contrary: On Friday, 306,232 new cases of covid-19 were recorded in the United States, the highest number in a single day. A power vacuum is not what America needs in the more than two months that remain until Biden is installed.
