President Donald Trump on Sunday, 15 November, put out a tweet saying Biden “won because the Election was Rigged”. This has been the closest Trump has come to admitting he lost the 3 November elections to democratic President-Elect Joe Biden. But soon after, he retreated from this stand saying he will continue fighting the “rigged elections” in court despite his own Homeland Security Agency putting out a statement that the recent elections in America have been “the most secure”.
Backtracking on his tacit concession on Biden’s win, Trump began repeating his earlier unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, attributing Biden’s win to a “fake media and rigged elections”.
But his campaign adviser Jason Miller told the media that the tweet did not mean that Trump was admitting defeat. “The president was referring to the mindset of the media. His goal remains to un-rig the election and continue exposing voting irregularities and unconstitutional election management by Democratic officials,” he said, reported Bloomsberg Quint
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, said on Fox News Channel that the president was being “sarcastic” in the tweet and that efforts to litigate the “fraudulent elections” were still underway. The Trump administration is preparing for a second term according to US State Secretary Mike Pompeo.
US federal election officials put out a statement stating “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised” on Thursday, 12 November, contradicting Trump’s Twitter claims of voter fraud.
“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should, too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections,” the statement said.
A hand recount is under way in Georgia where Biden has a lead of more than 14,000 votes, thus winning him the state. Patrick Moore, a Biden campaign legal adviser, said the recount had so far shifted vote totals "almost imperceptibly," and in Biden's favour, and there had been no evidence of widespread irregularities reported Reuters.
Biden Responds to Trump’s Refusal to Concede
In a press conference in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday, Biden addressed Trump’s refusal to concede the elections that declared the former the winner on 3 November and said, “The fact that they’re not willing to acknowledge we won at this point is not of much consequence to our planning.”
“Donald Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden president or not president. The American people did that,” Ron Klain, Biden’s newly appointed White House chief of staff, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Biden's campaign said it had raised $10.5 million of its target of $30 million for a "Biden Fight Fund" aimed at election defense efforts, according to a fundraising plea sent on Sunday, 15 November, reported Reuters.
(Inputs from Bloomsberg Quint, Fox News, NBC and Reuters)
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