Thursday, November 05, 2020

After A Whiny, Lie-Filled Statement, Trump Is Asked "Are You Being A Sore Loser?" (Meanwhile, Even Fox Is Reporting Trump's Attempt To "Rig" The Election; CNN Calls Him "An Obese Turtle On His Back Flailing In The Hot Sun")

 


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Donald Trump, White House Press Conference, November 5, 2020

Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. I'd like to provide the American people with an update on our efforts to protect the integrity of our very important 2020 election. If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late, we're looking to them very strongly, but a lot of votes came in late.

I've already decisively won many critical states, including massive victories in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, to name just a few. We won these and many other victories despite historic election interference from big media, big money, and big tech. As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers, and the pollsters got it knowingly wrong. They got it knowingly wrong. We had polls that were so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time.

There was no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave. That was false. That was done for suppression reasons. But instead there was a big red wave, and it's been properly acknowledged actually by the media. They were, I think, very impressed, but that was after the fact. That doesn't do us any good.

We kept the Senate despite having twice as many seats to defend as Democrats, and in a really much more competitive states. We did a fantastic job with the Senate. I think we're very proud of what's happened there. We had many more seats to defend. They spent almost $200 million on Senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky alone, two races, and hundreds of millions of dollars overall against us.

At the national level, our opponents major donors were Wall Street bankers and special interests. Our major donors were police officers, farmers, everyday citizens. Yet for the first time ever, we lost zero races in the House. I was talking to Kevin McCarthy today. He said he couldn't believe it. Zero racist, very unusual thing, zero, and actually won many new seats with, I think, many more on the way.

This was also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to Congress than ever before. That's a great achievement. I won the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican in 60 years, including historic numbers of Latino, African American, Asian American, and Native American voters. The largest ever in our history. We grew our party by 4 million voters. The greatest turnout in Republican Party history.

Democrats are the party of the big donors. The big media, the big tech, it seems, and Republicans have become the party of the American worker, and that's what's happened. And we're also, I believe the party of inclusion. As everyone now recognizes, media polling was election interference in the truest sense of that word, by powerful special interests.

These really phony polls, I have to call them phony polls, fake polls, were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republican's ability to raise funds. They were what's called suppression polls, everyone knows that now, and it's never been used to the extent that it's been used on this last election.

To highlight just a few examples, the day before election, Quinnipiac, which was wrong on every occasion that I know of, had Joe Biden up by five points in Florida, and they were off by 8.4 points and I won Florida easily, easily. So they had me losing Florida by a lot and I ended up winning Florida by a lot. Other than that, they were very accurate.

They had him up four points in Ohio and they were off by 12.2 points, and I also won Ohio, great state of Ohio very easily. And the Washington Post said, "Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin," and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 points, and they knew that, they're not stupid people. They knew that. Suppression.

There are now only a few states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of those states are run in all cases by Democrats. We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret and they wouldn't allow legally permissible observers.

We went to court in a couple of instances and we were able to get the observers put in. And 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. And we won a case, a big case, and we have others happening.

There are lots of litigation, even beyond our litigation. There's a tremendous amount of litigation generally because of how unfair this process was, and I predicted that. I've been talking about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system and it makes people corrupt, even if they aren't by nature, but they become corrupt. It's too easy. They want to find out how many votes they need, and then they seem to be able to find them. They wait and wait, and then they find them, and you see that on Election Night.

We were ahead in vote in North Carolina by a lot, a tremendous number of votes, and we're still ahead by a lot, but not as many because they're finding ballots all of a sudden. "Oh, we have some mail-in ballots." It's amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided too. I know that it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats, but in all cases they're so one-sided.

We were up by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. And that gets whittled down to, I think they said now we're up by 90,000 votes and they'll keep coming and coming and coming. They find them all over and they don't want us to have any observers. Although we won a court case, the judge said, "You have to have observers." Likewise in Georgia … And they're appealing, actually they're appealing. We want a case that we want people to watch and we want to observers and they're actually appealing, which is sort of interesting. I wonder why they'd appeal? All we want to do is have people watch as they do the vote tabulations.

Likewise in Georgia, I won by a lot, a lot, with a lead of over getting close to 300,000 votes on Election Night in Georgia. And by the way, got whittled down and now it's getting to be to a point where I'll go from winning by a lot to perhaps being even down a little bit.

In Georgia, a pipe burst in a far away location, totally unrelated to the location of what was happening and they stopped counting for four hours. And a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. We also had margins of 300,000 in Michigan. We were way up in Michigan, won the state. And in Wisconsin, we did likewise fantastically well, and that got whittled down. In every case, they got whittled down.

Today, we're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry, I guess, 55% of the remaining vote, 55% margins, and that's a margin that we've significantly exceeded. So we'll see what happens with that, but we're on track to do okay in Arizona. Our goal is to defend the integrity of the election. We'll not allow the corruption to steal such an important election, or any election for that manner. And we can't allow silence, anybody to silence our voters and manufacture results.

I've never had, I've been doing a lot of public things for a long time, I've never had anything that's been as inspirational by people calling, talking, sending things to us. I've never seen such love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this. People know what's happening and they see what's happening and just before their eyes, and there are many instances which will be reported very shortly.

There's tremendous litigation going on, and this is a case where they're trying to steal an election. They're trying to rig an election and we can't let that happen. Detroit and Philadelphia, known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country easily, cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race, a very important presidential race.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the State Supreme Court to try and ban our election observers and very strongly. Now we won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody in there. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots, and I can't imagine why. There's absolutely no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process, because if it's straight, they should be proud of it. Instead, they're trying obviously to commit fraud. There's no question about that.

In Philadelphia, observers have been kept far away, very far away. So far that people are using binoculars to try and see, and there's been tremendous problems caused. They put a paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and become somewhat violent.

The Eleventh Circuit ruled that in Georgia, the votes have been in by Election Day, that they should be in by Election Day, and they weren't. Votes are coming in after Election Day. And they had a ruling already that you have to have the votes in by Election Day. To the best of my knowledge, votes should be in by Election Day, and they didn't do that. Democrat officials never believed they could win this election honestly, I really believe that. That's why they did the mail-in ballots, where there's tremendous corruption and fraud going on.

That's why they mailed out tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification measures whatsoever, and I've told everybody that these things would happen because I've seen it happen. I watched a lot of different elections before they decided to go with this big, massive election with tens of millions of ballots going out to everybody. In many cases, totally unsolicited.

This was unprecedented in American history. This was by design. Despite years of claiming to care about the election security, they refuse to include any requirement to verify signatures, identities, or even determined whether they're eligible or ineligible to vote. People are walking in there, they have no idea. They just take in the numbers. They're writing down things, the workers, and doing a lot of bad things. And we have a lot of information coming and litigation that you'll see that will shake even you people up, and you've seen it all.

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania and other key states are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you've written about. And for a long time, you've been writing about the corrupt Democrat machine. I went to school there and I know a lot about it. It hasn't changed since a long time ago and hasn't changed. It has gotten worse.

In Pennsylvania, partisan Democrats have allowed ballots in the state to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that, and they're counting those without even postmarks or any identification whatsoever. So you don't have postmarks, you don't have identification.

There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the nation. Our campaign has been denied access to observe any counting in Detroit. Detroit is another place, and I wouldn't say has the best reputation for election integrity. Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots. But when our observers attempted to challenge the activity, those poll workers jumped in front of the volunteers to block their views so that they couldn't see what they were doing and it became a little bit dangerous.

One major hub for counting ballots in Detroit covered up the windows again with large pieces of cardboard, and so they wanted to protect and block the counting area. They didn't want anybody seeing the counting, even though these were observers who were legal observers that were supposed to be there.

In Detroit, there were hours of unexplained delay in delivering many of the votes for counting. The final batch did not arrive until 4:00 in the morning. And even though the polls closed at 8:00 o'clock, so they brought it in and the batches came in and nobody knew where they came from.

We've also been denied access to observe in critical places in Georgia. In multiple swing states, counting was halted for hours and hours on Election Night. With results withheld from major Democrat run locations only to appear later, and they certainly appeared and they all had the name Biden on them, or just about all. I think almost all. They all had the name Biden on them, which is a little strange.

I challenge Joe and every Democrat to clarify that they only want legal votes because they talk about votes and I think they should use the word legal, legal votes. We want every legal vote counted, and I want every legal vote counted. We want openness and transparency, no secret count rooms, no mystery ballots, no illegal votes being cast after Election Day. You have Election Day and the laws are very strong on that. You have an Election Day and they don't want votes cast after Election Day and they want the process to be an honest one. It's so important.

We want an honest election and we want an honest count and we want honest people working back there because it's a very important job. So that's the way this country is going to win. That's the way the United States will win, and we think we will win the election very easily. We think there's going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence, so much proof, and it's going to end up perhaps at the highest court in the land, we'll see. But we think there'll be a lot of litigation because we can't have an election stolen by like this.

And I tell you ... Small elections were a disaster. Small, very easy to handle elections were disastrous. This is a large scale version, and it's getting worse and worse every day. We're hearing stories that are horror stories, absolute horror stories, and we can't let that happen to the United States of America.

It's not a question of who wins, Republican, Democrat, Joe, myself. We can't let that happen to our country. We can't be disgraced by having something like this happen. So it will be hopefully cleared up. Maybe soon, I hope soon, but it'll probably go through a process, a legal process. And as you know, I've claimed certain states and he's claiming states and we can both claim the States, but ultimately I have a feeling judges are going to have to rule. But there's been a lot of shenanigans and we can't stand for that in our country. Thank you very much.

Reporters: Why are you undercutting this process, sir? . . . Are you being a sore loser?

It was a non-stop stream of lies and conspiracy theories.

New York Times:

[I]n a stunning news conference, Mr. Trump lied about the vote-counting underway in several states, conjuring up a conspiracy of "legal" and "illegal" ballots being tabulated and claiming without evidence that states were trying to deny him re-election. . . .

Mr. Trump's remarks, mostly read off notes, were at times more valedictory than defiant. . . . [H]e used much of his appearance to complain about pre-election polls, demonize the news media and try to put the best face on Tuesday's results . . .

For all of his complaints, Mr. Trump has only himself and his own party to blame for the delayed vote count in a number of states.

State and local Republican officials refused to let localities tally mail-in votes before Tuesday in some states. And because of Mr. Trump's monthslong attacks on mail ballots, more Democrats than Republicans voted in that fashion, which has allowed Mr. Biden to pick up the bulk of the votes arriving in the mail. . . .

Republican leaders offered no immediate response . . . but a small group of maverick lawmakers in the party denounced his comments . . . 

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, offered the sharpest rebuke, saying "this is getting insane" and demanding that the president stop "spreading debunked misinformation." . . .

[Other] Republican lawmakers . . . rushed to Mr. Trump's defense, siding with him in falsely asserting that the vote counting was illegal and Democrats were trying to cheat.

Washington Post: 

By Thursday morning, President Trump was angry and defiant.

The polls had closed more than a full 24 hours before, and as several key states continued to update their ballot counts, the election increasingly felt like it was slipping away from him and toward Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He wanted to speak.

"STOP THE COUNT," Trump bellowed on Twitter, a missive he quickly retweeted just over an hour later. "ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!" he added.

The only problem: If the vote-counting stopped at that moment, Trump would lose.

Trump's senior advisers intervened, explaining to the president that he needed to be more precise about just which vote counts he wanted halted. He did not want all of the states to stop counting votes, they added, because that would lead to a Biden victory.

And so, shortly after noon Thursday, Trump blasted out the message he had workshopped with advisers: "STOP THE FRAUD!"

There is no evidence of widespread voting fraud . . .

At one point, when Fox News — the cable channel most friendly to the president — called Arizona, which Trump had won in 2016, for Biden, the president implored his team to "get that result changed" . . . Campaign adviser Jason Miller took to Twitter to complain . . . and he, along with Conway, former counselor to the president, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, spent considerable time calling allies at Fox News, trying to get them to back off the Arizona decision. . . .

[A]ides had tried to prepare Trump that mail-in ballots would probably favor Biden, he was "genuinely taken aback" . . . as the votes rolled in . . .

Instead of reflecting on whether his rhetoric throughout the campaign demonizing mail-in ballots could have helped cost him the election, the president has taken the results as a vindication on his views of it, advisers said. . . .

Trump began complaining about voter fraud and the election being stolen, and by the time he appeared in the East Wing around 2 a.m. Wednesday to make remarks, he was determined to declare victory, even though his prepared notes did not say that.

"Frankly, we did win this election," Trump said in comments that were roundly criticized . . . 

By Wednesday evening . . . Trump had begun telling allies he believed he could lose — but only because the election was being "stolen from him" . . . And when he woke up Thursday, he was angry again and eager to take a more defiant tone . . .

The president was eager to speak publicly Thursday . . . arguing that his rightful victory was being stolen, and that states were conspiring against him. But again, allies and advisers counseled caution . . . urging him to keep a low profile.

But on Thursday evening, the president appeared in front of reporters at the White House around 6:45, seeming subdued and deflated, and made unproven claims about voter fraud and vowing to continue the fight through legal channels.

He mocked mail-in ballots and polling from the news media and said, falsely, that states were making up ballots to cost him the election. He made a series of other unsubstantiated allegations against democratic elections.

At one point, Trump said states that counted the votes were behaving in a corrupt manner — while Arizona needed to count the ballots so he could win. He walked away without taking questions.

A senior campaign official said Thursday night's appearance was the kind of news conference they wanted to avoid.

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