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United States President-Elect Joe Biden delivers a Thanksgiving speech at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 25, 2020. – Biden called for an end to the “dismal season of division” in speech Christmas. “I think in this bleak division season, demonization will give way to a light year,” Biden said. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)
WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden said Wednesday that Americans “will not tolerate” attempts to skew the outcome of the US election, as Donald Trump called for the results to be annulled.
In a speech on the eve of Thanksgiving, Biden said in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware that Americans “have full, fair and free elections, and then we honor the results.”
“The people of this nation and the laws of the country will not tolerate anything else,” he said.
The Democrat’s statement pointed to a tightening line against Trump, who for more than three weeks has been promoting conspiracy theories, without meaningful evidence, that Biden stole the victory on November 3.
Trump, who also granted a full pardon to former security assistant Michael Flynn, convicted of lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia, got to work.
“We have to turn the election around,” he told Republican supporters in Pennsylvania.
“This election was rigged,” Trump said by phone, repeating several claims of vote manipulation that have been rejected in courtrooms across the country. Trump said “all we need is for some judge to hear him correctly.”
Trump was due to appear first in person at the Republican rally, which took place near the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield. He canceled at the last minute.
The meeting, which also featured Trump’s controversial personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, was falsely portrayed by the president on Twitter as a “very important Pennsylvania State Senate hearing.”
In fact, it was held at a small-town hotel and, rather than an official hearing, it was simply a forum for ardent Trump supporters to push forward their claims without evidence.
Biden won Pennsylvania by a margin of 80,000 votes on November 3, helping him achieve a convincing victory at the national level and making Trump a single-term president.
– Trump 2024? –
Trump, who broke countless rules during his four years in power, is forging new territory with his refusal to give in to Biden.
Supporters suggest that he is already waiting for an announcement to run for president again in 2024.
Building your brand before a new campaign could be one explanation for the real estate mogul’s stubborn pursuit of such a lost cause.
Giuliani and other Trump attorneys have seen unfounded challenges to vote counts rejected by courts across the country.
And while Trump alleges, among other conspiracy theories, that voting machines deliberately erased millions of their votes, the government’s election security agency declared this election “the safest” in US history.
After coming under pressure from a trickle of senior Republicans, which was slowly building up, Trump on Monday ended his blockade of government assistance to facilitate Biden’s preparation to take office on January 20.
But Trump has yet to take the simplest steps in normal post-election protocol, starting with a phone call to Biden.
“No, I have not heard from President Trump,” Biden told NBC News.
Given Trump’s threats before the election not to acknowledge the results, Biden told NBC that he is “not surprised by the president’s response.”
Since the election, Trump has largely disappeared from his regular work schedule and has not once answered questions from journalists.
However, he showed his political muscle on Wednesday with his pardon for Flynn, potentially the first of many for friends and associates caught up in the administration’s various scandals.
“It is a great honor for me to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has received a full pardon,” Trump tweeted, wishing the disgraced former national security adviser a “really fantastic Thanksgiving.” holidays.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts.
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