President Donald Trump pushed out more unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen by firing off a series of angry tweets Sunday, ...
President Donald Trump pushed out more unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen by firing off a series of angry tweets Sunday, even as the vote count continued to move against him and Joe Biden shifted into transition mode.
The tweet from Trump came more than an hour after George W. Bush issued a message telling him the election's outcome was 'clear' and that it was held with 'fairness and integrity' and Chris Christie, one of the president's most prominent allies, said it was time for him to show evidence or 'move on.'
With his political options narrowing and his hold on power becoming more tenuous by the hour, Trump also blasted the media for getting to 'call' who will be the next president.
After the broadcast and cable networks all called the race for Democrat Joe Biden, the race entered a new phase, with Biden giving a victory speech and laying plans for the transition, even as Trump and his legal team prepared lawsuits and made accusations of fraud on TV without yet providing evidence.
'Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be? We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks!' Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon after another round of golf, his second in two days.
Melania, who had been the subject of a report she had urged her husband to concede, made clear that she was still with her husband on his war footing on Twitter.
'The American people deserve fair elections. Every legal - not illegal - vote should be counted,' the Slovenia-born former model wrote. 'We must protect our democracy with complete transparency,' she added.
She did not go as far as Trump and his allies in alleging that there had been election fraud, but her comments lined up with Trump and GOP allies' calls for investigation and litigation to get to the bottom of the Trump team's claims.
Despite Trump's claims about the media, the election will only be decided after county boards of elections submit their tallies, states report the results, the electoral college meets, and Congress meets in a joint session.
What media organizations do is evaluate the vote count as it comes in, then determine when one candidate or the other no longer has a chance of winning a state based on the outstanding vote.
In the case of Pennsylvania, which networks used to reach their conclusion, Biden is up by 43,000 votes, with 98 per cent of precincts reporting.
What makes the lead basically insurmountable, though, is that the remaining votes are coming almost entirely from mail ballots in pro-Biden counties, and Biden has been winning each batch by an overwhelming margin.
Even if the media were wrong – networks wrongly called Florida in 2000 only to pull their projections back – it wouldn't matter if the official count went the other way for some reason.
Amid conflicting reports about factions inside his orbit, Trump's public comments have all attacked the election and demonstrated fight.
He once again quoted former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a partisan warrior, calling big city machines 'corrupt' and venting 'these people are thieves,' as well as calling it a 'stolen election.'
Melania's intervention also adds to suggestions that his family are becoming fractured by the outcome, with Jared Kushner reported to have told him to concede,
How Trump will be persuaded to agree to a transition of power remains in flux, with the failure of the intervention by Bush a sign that there may be few options to get the president to come round to his fate.
Bush congratulated Joe Biden on his election victory Sunday - and delivered an unmistakable message to Donald Trump that he must now concede.
The only living former Republican president broke his silence, more than 24 hours after Biden was declared the winner in a call by TV networks and the Associated Press, to say that he had spoken to the Democratic victor, and to Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect.
'I just talked to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden,' he said in a statement. No Republican leader has so far called Biden president-elect.
'Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country.'
I'm not giving up: Donald Trump saluted supporters waiting for him outside his Sterling, Virginia, golf club, after tweeting a message of defiance to the TV networks and Associated Press calling the election for Joe Biden. Biden's lead in Pennsylvania is now above 44,000
You say hello, but some Republicans say goodbye: Donald Trump is defying calls from George W. Bush and Mitt Romney to give up his fight to challenge the results of the election. His loyalists want him to fight on - but his family appears to be fracturing
Swinging for the fences: President Donald Trump hit the golf course on Sunday morning in Sterling, Virginia, to blow off some steam after the media declared his rival Joe Biden winner of the election the day before
Low profile: Trump donned a white cap bearing his campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again' as he hit the golf course
No mask? Trump did not wear a face covering as he interacted with caddies at the Trump National Golf Club
Will he listen? Donald Trump headed for his golf course in Virginia where he was later spotted golfing - the same place where he learned that the election had been called for his rival Joe Biden
'A good man.' George W. Bush said the 46th president would be Joe Biden and that they had political differences, but he believed in Biden's ability to 'unify' the country - another pointed message to Trump
And in what will be instantly read as a rebuke to Trump over his claims of fraud and a direct message that he must publicly concede the election, Bush said there were no doubts over the integrity of the result.
'No matter how you voted, your vote counted,' he said.
Sunday morning also saw his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani aggressively claim he will contest the election, telling Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that he had 'four or five' lawsuits which would be ready by the end of the week.
He claimed Republican observers were not allowed close enough to see mail-in ballots being processed in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, and that dead people in Philadelphia had voted in the past.
He also claimed that he would sue in Nevada, which has been called for Biden, without specifying how. Asked 'where is Bill Barr on this?' - a reference to the attorney general, who in theory at least could investigate allegations of mass-scale vote rigging - he said: 'I don't know and I can't worry about that.'
Giuliani claimed he has '60 or 70 witnesses' to voter fraud, and might make 'one or two' public. So far there have been a handful of anecdotal witnesses in videos posted on social media but none who have made claims to authorities.
Another key member of Trump's kitchen cabinet, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, used the same show to tell the president not to concede.
'If we don't challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,' he claimed.
Gingrich's claims the election was corrupt came from a Fox & Friends interview in which he called Democrats 'corrupt' and claimed the outcome was a 'left-wing power grab.'
'President Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated.
'The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.'
The message from the 43rd president could hardly be clearer and shows the pressure mounting on Trump to give up his apparently doomed fight to remain in the White House for a second term.
His family appeared split on the issue, with Jared Kushner reported to be telling him to give up the fight and concede, but his sons Eric and Don Jr. aggressively tweeting claims of voter fraud - none of them with evidence - and demands for a 'manual recount' across the country.
Vocal allies took to the Fox News circuit this morning, including Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, all pushing for the fight to continue.
But the intervention by Bush will serve to remind Republicans of the damage not conceding could present to the party in the future.
Trump himself called the election 'stolen' Sunday morning as he tweeted claims from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that Democrats 'stole what they had to steal.'
But he avoided using his own voice in a series of tweets, instead highlighting Gingrich - who had appeared on Fox and Friends - and Turley, a registered Democrat who had spoken against Trump's impeachment as a Republican witness to the House Judiciary Committee.
The strategy to wage a legal fight against the votes tallied for Biden in Pennsylvania and other places is more to provide Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can´t quite grasp and less about changing the election's outcome, the officials said. They spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.
Trump aides and allies also acknowledged privately the legal fights would - at best - forestall the inevitable, and some had deep reservations about the president's attempts to undermine faith in the vote. But they said Trump and a core group of loyalists were aiming to keep his base of supporters on his side even in defeat.
There has never been a presidential election in memory where such widespread fraud was alleged.
Moments after the AP called the race for Biden, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani stood in front of campaign banner taped over the garage door of a landscaping company in Philadelphia, wedged between a cremation center and an adult book store, with a handful of poll watchers and declared they'd been kept too far away to check for any inaccuracies.
'We have no way of knowing, because we´ve been deprived of the right to inspect ballots,' he said.
Partisan poll watchers are designated by a political party or campaign to report any concerns they may have. They are not poll workers who actually tally ballots. Monitoring polling places and election offices is allowed in most states, but rules vary and there are certain limits to avoid any harassment or intimidation. They are not allowed to interfere with the conduct of the election and are typically required to register in advance with the local election office.
This year, because of the coronavirus that has killed more than 230,000 people across the country, there was litigation in a few states, including Pennsylvania, over where poll watchers could stand to ensure social distancing.
Lawyers could potentially argue the vote tally should be cast aside over fraud observed by poll watchers, but in order to win that argument they´d need evidence, not just allegations the monitors weren't allowed to see clearly enough. Judges are loathe to disenfranchise any voters and there would need to be substantial proof that fraud had damaged the count so much that it must be set aside.
Democratic poll watchers, who were also given the same access, have not raised concerns. Giuliani called evidence of fraud circumstantial at the news conference. He said he'd be filing suit in federal court, but the issue has already been before judges.
A federal judge in Philadelphia Thursday night ordered the two sides to work out an agreement on the number of poll watchers and how close they could be to the counting. The judge also voiced concerns about the safety of poll workers during the pandemic if poll watchers were allowed to peer over their shoulders.
But Trump's tweets Sunday make clear that if his team believe they are providing him with an off-ramp, he seems to be rejecting that junction and heading down the interstate instead.
The tweets suggest that Trump is not backing down or planning to concede despite signs he is already fracturing his family with his sons and Kushner at odds over whether he should concede.
Gingrich had spent Saturday at the same Trump golf course where the president was golfing when he was told that TV networks and the Associated Press had called the election and that he was defeated. It is unknown if the two men spoke there.
Trump also amplified claims by Turley, a law professor, about fraud, specifically in Pennsylvania, which is the state which pushed Biden over the top to his electoral college majority.
Turley suggested that there could be a problem 'authenticating' ballots received after Tuesday and that this could affect the result of 'the whole election.'
The claim is difficult to assess. Pennsylvania had already separated the late-arriving ballots, and it is so far not known how many there are and whether there enough to sway the election's outcome.
Trump's eldest sons launched a fusillade of morning tweets claiming their father's defeat was fraudulent Sunday, in a sign of a split from their brother-in-law Jared Kushner.
Don Jr. and Eric both retweeted claims from Republican operatives that included the late boxer Joe Frazier voting in Philadelphia and that counting software was rigged against Republicans.
Get the message? Donald Trump was followed by protesters as he arrived at his club in Sterling, Virginia, to golf
Trump quoted Newt Gingrich on Fox & Friends in his tweet. The best pollster in Britain was in fact an American right-win think tank commentator, Patrick Barsham, who works for the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. but was writing in the Sunday Express in the UK
Another voice: Jonathan Turley is a law professor and registered Democrat who has backed Trump repeatedly
Already packing? The president's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner was seen leaving his home in Washington DC with a duffel bag in hand on Sunday morning
Keeping mum: Kushner declined to answer when asked by DailyMail.com if Trump planned to concede to Biden