US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has made his first public remarks since he called the election a “fraud on the American people” late on election night.
Speaking to reporters at the White House he said:
“If you count the legal votes I easily won. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”
Without providing any evidence, he claimed that there had been “historic election interference by big media, big money and big tech” in the 2020 election.
Speaking at a press conference in the White House press briefing room, he added:
“I have already decisively won many critical states including massive victories in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, to name just a few.
Without evidence, he again claimed: “We won these and many other victories despite historic election interference from big media, big money and big tech.”
His comments come after Joe Biden earlier said he had “no doubt” that he was going to become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden urged Americans to “stay calm” and to wait until every vote was counted.
Speaking hours after the former Vice President’s brief remarks, as his lead continued to narrow in the key states of Georgia and Pennsylvania, Trump claimed the Republicans were “winning in all the key locations” but then their lead had been “whittled away”.
“We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.”
Referring to legally permissible observers, the US President claimed that when observers arrived, they were told to be “100 feet away” from the count.
“When the observers got there, they wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 80 feet, 100 feet away, or outside the building, to observe people inside the building”, he told reporters.
On the postal vote system, Trump added: “I’ve been talking about mail-in voting for a long time. It’s really destroyed our system, it’s a corrupt system.”
He claimed the “blue wave” predicted by the polls had never materialised and there had been a “big red wave instead”.
He added: “The pollsters got it knowingly wrong.
“There was no blue wave that they predicted, they thought there was going to be a big blue wave – that was false, it was done for suppression reasons.
But instead there was a big red wave and it has been properly acknowledged by the media, they were, I think, very impressed but that’s after the fact.
He challenged Joe Biden and the Democrats to “clarify that they only want legal votes”.
“They talk about votes, I think they should call them legal votes, they want every legal vote counted and I want every legal vote counted,” he said.
He added he wanted “openness and transparency” during the process without “secret count rooms”, “mystery ballots” or votes cast after the official election day.
“They want the process to be an honest one, it’s so important”, he said.
“We want an honest election, an honest count and we want honest people working back there because it’s a very important job.
That’s the way this country is going to win, that’s the way the United States is going to win.
Trump said his party thought they would win the election “very easily” but that there would be “a lot of litigation” involved.
“We have so much evidence, so much proof and it’s going to end up, perhaps, at the highest court in the land”, he said.
“We think there will be a lot of litigation because we can’t have an election stolen like this.”
Trump said his goal was to “defend the integrity” of the election, despite offering no evidence of voter fraud during his press conference.
Biden, throughout the campaign, urged his supporters to vote by post if they needed to, due to fears over the coronavirus pandemic. Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of that system and called for his voters to vote in person on election day.
The states still in play are currently counting the postal votes, which skew heavily in favour of Biden, having counted the election day votes – which skewed in favour of Trump – first.
Biden earlier told reporters in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware:
“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.”
Biden made similar remarks in a speech yesterday evening.
As it stands per projections by Associated Press, Democrat Biden has 264 electoral college votes and just one additional state should clinch him a victory.
Biden would require a win in either Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina or his home state Pennsylvania to reach the necessary 270 votes.
As additional votes are added to his tally, Biden continues to gain on Trump in Pennsylvania. A final result may emerge in the state overnight, Irish time.
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