At 2:30 AM, Donald Trump convened a victory speech dressed up as a press conference at The White House.
The president, as feared, declared the election fraudulent. Trump also called multiple states for himself before those states had finished tallying their ballots. Ultimately, he declared victory.
“This is a major fraud on our nation,” he said. “So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
The proceedings were decried on social media and came shortly after Trump made similar remarks on Twitter, where one of his tweets was flagged by the platform.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the implications of Trump’s assertions might be, but suffice to say the odds of the president conceding should Joe Biden manage to reach the threshold for victory are now essentially zero.
That’s consistent with warnings from the likes of Michael Cohen, who, in comments to the The New Yorker for a piece published on November 1, said his old boss would “Not concede. Never, ever, ever.”
Just so there’s no confusion: There was no winner when Trump declared victory. Reports out earlier this week suggested the president planned to call the race for himself in the event such a move was any semblance of plausible. He did just that.
The odds of Democrats flipping the Senate seemed very low early Wednesday morning.
In simple terms: There was no obvious, easy path to a “blue sweep.” And the election was close enough to allow Trump to assert fraud. He has now explicitly done so, and in the same remarks, he invoked the Supreme Court, which is, of course, stacked with a trio of his own nominees.
Why he would need to go to the Supreme Court if he expects to hold all of the states he listed in his remarks is anyone’s guess.
B/C elections are messy and he prefers the SCOTUS 6 to 3 odds… I know that was a rhetorical question… 😉
Cadet Bonespurs has to go legal if he loses. That’s legal as in fighting against jail time, or legal as in fighting to deny Americans their rightful votes.
Ironically, it’s possible that a close Biden victory could provide the pathway for Trump to concede. One of Trump’s huge worries about losing must be the enormous legal liability he faces. It’s possible that Biden could cut a backroom deal with Trump to secure Trump’s concession in exchange for an agreement not to pursue legal cases against Trump or the Trump organization.
Interesting.
interesting yes, but even if Biden (hypothetically) agreed to such a backroom deal there is a ton of investigations awaiting Trump at state level (New York), which are beyond reach of a (again hypothetical) presidential pardon.
That’s absolutely true, but (a) it would still be advantageous for Trump to secure an agreement not to be prosecuted by the Feds even if he still faces state-level prosecutions and (b) it also doesn’t preclude a “gentleman’s agreement” with Letitia James as part of the deal with the Biden camp in exchange for Trump’s concession.
I’m not saying this is a likely outcome, just that the current setup opens the door to it and it creates the possibility of Trump conceding. At the end of the day, the only person Trump cares about is himself.
completely agree with your last sentence.
And if such a deal meant that Trump will concede and there is a peaceful transition, it might even be worth it.
On the other hand, it feels profoundly wrong to let him off the hook.
In some way such a scenario embodies the ultimate irony:
He who had never to face the consequences of his actions in his entire life gets away once again – by admitting to defeat.
Good news: By the time this is over, Joe Biden will have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in US history.
Not so good news: By the time this is over, Donald Trump will have received the second highest number of votes of any candidate in US presidential election history.
Yes, that is the truth.
That Donald Trump.
FWIW, I don’t agree. I get the attraction and I’d be on board to let, say, a foreign third world dictator retire in modest splendor if it meant his country could be left to heal…
BUT you guys never prosecuted GWB. I don’t think Americans realise how much prestige and moral high ground they conceded by not only invading Iraq but then letting the entire GWB administration walk away scot-free. After that, every time one’s complained about Putin to Russians or Erdogan to Turks or variation thereof, everyone of them engaged in whataboutism and “there’s no difference between American and X, it’s all the same Great Game”.
I get it will be contentious to try Trump (and, ideally, Barr and a few others) but it would do some good to the American soul.
Donald Trump should not be allowed near a microphone anytime in the middle of any night. He dealt a blow to the credibility of his office, and though you might have thought it hard to do, he also dealt a blow to whatever legacy he eventually will have. But he is not alone in his stupidity. Cal Cunningham will eventually and deservedly shoulder a major share of the blame for Democrats not gaining control of the Senate, and possibly for the Dems not winning NC. Smartest person in this election: Susan Collins, who withdrew her anti-private equity amendments to the 2017 tax bill and got massive last minute funding for her comeback victory this year from: private equity.
“Stop counting” seems a difficult argument when Biden is already at 270 using already-counted votes.
stable genius