U.S. President Donald Trump gesticulates while speaking during a rally to challenge the certification of the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election by the U.S. Congress in Washington, USA, January 6, 2021.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
President Donald Trump lied about the results of the presidential election and bragged about the size of a crowd at a rally on Wednesday when he refused to admit defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
“We will never give up, we will never grant,” Trump said to participants outside the White House, who applauded him an hour before Congress began the process of confirming Biden’s victory at the Electoral College.
“Let’s stop the theft!” Trump said as he took the stage after the crowd waited for his appearance while listening to pop songs like “Macho Man”, “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Tiny Dancer”.
The lame Republican also reiterated an appeal to his own vice president, Mike Pence, to refuse to accept the validity of Biden Electoral College ballots from various battlefield states.
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather at Presidents Park on the Ellipse by the White House for their rally and speech to challenge the US Congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results in Washington, USA, January 6, 2021.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
Experts say that Pence does not have that power when he chairs the joint session of Congress, as he confirms the certifications of the results of the state elections on Wednesday afternoon.
“I hope Mike does the right thing,” said Trump. “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we will win the election.”
“He has an absolute right to do that.”
More than a dozen Republican senators and up to 100 or more House members are expected to contest the results of some states, but that effort should not prevent Biden’s victory, because both the Senate and the House are on track to confirm their victories in those states. .
Trump, as he did for two months, said he won the popular vote immediately, when in fact he lost by more than 7 million popular votes to the former Democratic vice president.
“We won with an overwhelming victory,” he said. “This was not a tight election.”
Trump also claimed that “they cheated like hell” in Georgia’s two special Senate elections on Tuesday, where Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock was projected a winner over Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, and where another Democrat, Jon Ossoff, was leading Republican David Perdue in counting the ballots.
Trump and his allies claim, without any evidence, that there was widespread electoral fraud in several states, which in turn led these states to allow the votes of the Electoral College to be attributed to Biden. The Democrat won 306 electoral votes, 36 more than he needs to win the White House.
Trump won by exactly the same margin in 2016 over Hillary Clinton.
“They rigged an election. They manipulated it like never before,” Trump said on Wednesday.
However, no court has invalidated any vote for Biden in an allegation by the Trump campaign or its supporters that a fraud was committed.
Legal efforts related to Trump challenging Biden’s victory, which included a request for the United States Supreme Court to address the issue, have been defeated or withdrawn across the board.
The president lamented the Supreme Court, which has three judges appointed by Trump, saying the high court “loves to decide against me”.
Trump’s disjointed comments on Wednesday soon evolved into him asking “Where’s Hunter?”
He hoped that the allegations he had raised about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, during the election, would help him win a second term.