He promised a lot of litigation over claims of fraud across multiple states, with Joe Biden’s ascendancy appearing increasingly assured as ballot returns show him closing the gap in key swing-states while leading in others that are critical to Trump’s claim of to a second term.
The world’s attention was cast to the ballot counts in the key states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada that remain too close to call. The State of Arizona is also still in play despite some US news media projecting that Biden would claim the Republican stronghold for the first time as a Democrat since 1996. But it was the President who appeared late Thursday after being holed up in the White House making ill-founded claims of fraud, as his grip on the Presidency looks increasingly tenuous.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win, if you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us, if you count the votes that came in late.”
He added that: “Our goal is to defend the integrity of the election, we will not allow corruption to steal such an important election or any election for that matter and we can’t allow silence, anyone to silence our voters and manufacture results.”
Trump indicated that given the various streams of litigation his campaign was pursuing across the country, that ultimately judges would have to determine the outcome of the election.
“We think there’s going to be a lot of litigation, because we have so much evidence, so much proof and its going to end up perhaps at the highest court if the land, we think there’s going to be a lot of litigation because we can’t have an election stolen like this and I tell you, I have been talking about this for many months. It’s not a question of who wins, Republican or Democrat, Joe, myself we can’t let that happen to our country, we can’t be disgraced by something like this happen so it will be hopefully cleared up, maybe soon, I hope soon, but it will probably go through a legal process. But ultimately I have a feeling judges will have to rule, but there’s been a lot of shenanigans and we can’t stand for that in our country.”
“In America, the vote is sacred. It’s how people of this nation express their will. And it is the will of the voters, no one, not anything else, that chooses the president of the United States of America. So each ballot must be counted. And that’s what we’re going to see going through now. And that’s how it should be. Democracy sometimes is messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance that’s been the envy of the world.”
SA politicians weigh-in on US elections:
Biden called for all the votes to be counted as he sought to portray himself as unruffled while the President appeared increasingly untethered.
“We continue to feel, the Senator and I, we continue to feel very good about where things stand. We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners. So I ask everyone to stay calm, all the people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed, and we’ll know very soon. So thank you all for your patience. But we’ve got to count the votes.”
SAIIA reacts to US election results:
