[ad_1]
Pressure from Donald Trump to reverse Joe Biden’s defeat in the US presidential elections continues. The outgoing president twice called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the past week to try to avoid the certification of the result in the November 3 elections in his state.
The initiative arose after the Republican candidacy lost several legal battles before the state, both in state and federal courts for not certifying the results that the 20 votes of the electoral college of that state give to president-elect Joe Biden. The Trump campaign affirms that the electoral processes were not uniform throughout the territory and they are injured by various irregularities, but it never offered concrete evidence of these claims.
The calls, confirmed this Tuesday to the newspaper Washington Post by the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bryan Cutler, they make Pennsylvania the third state where Trump tried to reverse the defeat of former Vice President Joe Biden. He had already done it with the Republicans of Michigan and the Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and he had also publicly attacked the Governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, for certifying the results in his state.
“What can we do to fix this?” Trump asked Cutler. He reminded the president that only Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, or a court would have the power to turn things around, provided there was evidence of fraud, according to his spokesman.
He described the phone calls between Cutler and Trump as “friendly” and that the president did not “push” in a hostile way. However, he acknowledged that the pressure on Cutler, who faces re-election as mayor on January 5, has been intense. The office’s telephone mailbox, which can hold thousands of voice messages, was filled “multiple times” last week.
The White House spokesman declined to comment on the calls, as did a Trump campaign spokesperson, writes the Washington Post.
Since November 4, President Trump has refused to accept the electoral defeat, which he called “massive fraud.” The refusal to leave the White House and acknowledge the victory of the Democrats has led to several demonstrations by Republican supporters. In Pennsylvania, for example, hundreds of people demonstrated over the weekend at the home of Cutler and the Democratic Secretary of State in Michigan, armed with firearms and signs reading “Stop Robbery.”
Congress is expected to formally accept the results on January 6, 2021; Biden will take office on January 20. However, a group of 32 Republican state legislators joined together to try to overturn the certification of the Democrat’s victory in Pennsylvania with the United States Supreme Court.
