Trump Defiant in Face of Election Loss
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP refused to concede the election to Democratic challenger Joe Biden Saturday after the race was called for the former vice president, issuing a defiant statement insisting the race was not over.
"We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don't want the truth to be exposed," Trump said in a lengthy statement after Biden was declared winner. "The simple fact is this election is far from over."
The president's protest comes after Biden bested Trump in Pennsylvania to nab 20 Electoral College votes needed to seal the win. Biden leads in states like Georgia and Nevada that had not been called were expected to provide Biden an additional cushion. The president was reportedly on the golf course when the call was made.
Trump's challenge to the outcome comes as little surprise, though it does mark one of the only times in American history a candidate has so forcefully rejected the results of a presidential election.
Since the early morning hours of Wednesday, the president has been laying the groundwork to cast doubt on the election results by alleging widespread voter fraud, accusing the Democrats of cheating and proclaiming himself the winner of states Biden won and of those that, at the time, had yet to be decided.
"I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!," Trump tweeted an hour before Biden was declared winner.
As the path to Electoral College victory increasingly favored Biden on Wednesday afternoon, the president mobilized his campaign team and lawyers, requesting a recount in Wisconsin, filing lawsuits in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania to stop counting votes and challenging an early call of Biden's win in Arizona.
Trump said he'll continue challenging the election results in court, though any recount calls or legal actions would face substantial hurdles given the apparent margin of the Biden victory.
"Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated," he said.
Biden urged supporters to remain calm in short speeches on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night as the favorable results trickled in, saying that when the dust settles he would be named president and that he would serve on behalf of voters in blue and red states.
"The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans – whether you voted for me or not," he said in a statement Saturday after he was declared winner.
In contrast, Trump's actions prompted armed supporters to rally outside polling stations in Arizona, demanding every ballot be counted, and also sent supporters crowding polling stations in Pennsylvania and Michigan demanding officials stop counting votes.
The results in a handful of pivotal battleground states were always predicted to take days to weeks to finalize because mail-in ballots, which take longer to count, flooded into states in record numbers due to the coronavirus pandemic. In some states, elections officials are not allowed to begin counting mail-in ballots until Election Day. While the president led some of those key states late Tuesday evening and into the early morning hours of Wednesday, the remaining mail-in ballots favored Biden and tilted the race in his favor.
Trump administration and campaign officials have been angling to undermine election results for months now, with increasing intensity as Nov. 3 approached and the president remained underwater in the polls.
As early as this summer the president began claiming that election fraud is a massive problem in the U.S. and that mail-in ballots lead to delayed and illegitimate election results – a mantra he repeated right up to Election Day while also urging his supporters to poll-watch in places with historically heavy Democratic turnout.
At one point, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election altogether.
"The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election," he said during the Republican National Convention.
Leading up to the election, Trump also refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and insisted on confirming newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at breakneck speed, he said, in part so that the high court could decide cases challenging the results of the election.
"I think this will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it's very important that we have nine Justices," Trump said.
The president's refusal to accept defeat comes on the heels of attempts by his campaign to prevent or make it more difficult for votes to be counted in Democratic-heavy counties of battleground states.
The Trump campaign sued in Nevada to stop the count of Las Vegas-area mail-in ballots, alleging that effective signature-checking would be an impossible task in the state's biggest and mostly Democratic county. It also sued to stop the use of mail-in ballot drop boxes in Pennsylvania and joined a challenge to a court-ordered extension of the deadline there to receive mailed ballots.
"A lot of shenanigans and a lot of bad things happen with ballots when you say, 'Oh let's give them days and days,' and then all of the sudden the ballot count changes," Trump told reporters Tuesday when asked about the Supreme Court's ruling to allow ballots in Pennsylvania mailed by Election Day to be counted until Nov. 6. "I think it's a very bad thing they've done. That's a very dangerous decision for this country."
Trump's refusal to concede drew swift criticism from Democrats and Republicans, who took the president to task for his efforts to undermine a fundamental tenet of American democracy.
It's unclear how long Trump will continue to refuse the election results – there will be recounts in a handful of states that could take weeks to certify, and the president is likely to continue his pursuit of reelection in the courts. But his initial decision to cast doubt on Biden as the winner could have sweeping repercussions for democracy in the U.S. and serve to further divide an American electorate that's already entrenched at historic levels.
Notably, concession speeches are not constitutionally required – though they are the norm – but even if a candidate refuses to deliver one, it doesn't change the outcome of the election.
"As we said on July 19th, the American people will decide this election," said Andrew Bates, the director of rapid response for Biden's campaign. "The United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House."
