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Barack Obama has said that it is “absolutely” time for President Donald Trump to grant the election, and that he should have already.
Mr trumpCBS ‘predecessor told CBS’ 60 Minutes that it should have conceded defeat to Joe biden “the day after choice“And it was time for America’s outgoing leader to” put the country first. “
“When your time is up, it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego, your own interests and your own disappointments,” he said. Mr. Obama.
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“My advice to President Trump is that if he wants to be remembered in this last stage of the game as someone who puts the country first, it is time for him to do the same,” the Democrat continued.
When asked if it was time for Trump to concede, he said: “It is, absolutely. I think it was time he conceded probably the day after the election.”
Obama also criticized high-profile Republicans who have agreed with Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
“I’m more concerned about the fact that other Republican officials, who clearly know you agree with this, are pandering to him in this way,” he said.
“It is one more step to delegitimize not only the incoming Biden administration, but democracy in general. And that is a dangerous path.”
On Mr. Trump electoral fraud theoriesHe said: “The president does not like to lose and never admits the loss.”
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Earlier on Sunday, Trump accepted for the first time President-elect Biden “won” the US election, but he quickly made it clear that he wasn’t backing down.
He made the original admission in a tweet along with more unsubstantiated claims that the vote was unfairly and deliberately stacked against him.
Trump wrote of his future successor: “He won because the election was rigged.
“NO OBSERVERS OR OBSERVERS ALLOWED FOR VOTE, vote tabulated by a radical left-wing private company Dominion with a bad reputation and a shoddy team that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by big!), The Fake & Silent Media, & more! “
He then tried to retract the apparent acknowledgment that Biden won the White House, adding that he was making it clear that he would continue to try to overturn the election result.
“He only won in the eyes of FAKE NEWS MEDIA,” Trump later tweeted. “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was an EQUIPPED CHOICE!”
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Last week, Trump became the first president since 1992 not to be re-elected, following projections that Biden had successfully swapped the key states of Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia to win the White House.
So far, Biden has 78.8 million votes, the most ever for a winning candidate, compared to 73.1 million for Trump.
Critics hoped that Trump’s initial tweet, who lost the Electoral College by 74 and the popular vote by five million votes, was a sign that he had finally accepted the result.
Obama campaigned alongside his former vice president before the election.
Biden’s new chief of staff, Ron Klain, told NBC News: “If the president is prepared to start acknowledging that reality, that’s a good thing.”
He added: “Donald Trump’s Twitter feed does not make Joe Biden president or not president.
“The American people did that.”
And a Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, said it was “actually good” to see Trump’s tweet apparently admitting that Biden had won.
“I think that’s the beginning of a recognition … We want to make sure there is a smooth transition,” Hutchinson said on NBC.
The president spent the days immediately after his electoral defeat playing golf
In recent days, Trump seemed to be slowly approaching acknowledging the reality of their loss.
In comments made Friday at the Rose Garden about a coronavirus vaccine, Trump said his administration “will not go into a lockdown” to curb the spread of COVID-19, but added that “whatever happens in the future, who knows what administration it will be? I guess time will tell.”
But on Sunday he renewed his unsubstantiated attacks on an electoral technology company, Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion has said that it “denies the claims about any vote changes or alleged software problems with our voting systems.”
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency that oversees US electoral security, said in a statement last week that “the November 3 elections were the safest in US history.”
The agency said: “There is no evidence that any voting system has removed or lost votes, changed votes or been compromised in any way.”
