by If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal ones, they can try to steal the election from us.
Even as he spoke, TV network split-screens showed how his authority and claim to the White House is diminishing by the minute.
The live counts from Georgia and Pennsylvania showed his lead shrinking as mail-in and early in-person ballots were added to the tally.
But more significant was how his hay-maker claims were received. A growing number of Republicans and – ominously for the President – the Murdoch press in the US snorted with outrage and even ridicule.
Hosts on Fox News reminded viewers there was no evidence for what the President was claiming; that somehow Democrats were magically inventing out of thin air new ballots for Biden.
A Tweet by Donald Trump Jr, soon restricted by the social media company under its false information dissemination rules, calling on his father to wage total war over the election, was described by The New York Post as clueless and panic-stricken .
The same paper headlined a story on the Presidents press conference as; Downcast Trump makes baseless election fraud claims in White House address.
There is no defence for the Presidents comments tonight undermining our Democratic process, said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican.
America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before. No election or person is more important than our Democracy.
Sean Spicer Trump’s first White House press secretary said: “I haven’t seen any evidence of [voter fraud]… I don’t think it helps his case,” he said on SiriusXMs The Dan Abrams Show.
Jeff Flake, a Republican former senator from Arizona, urged his party to speak up sooner rather than later.
Fellow Republicans, dont wait until the election is called to defend our elections and our democratic institutions. The time is now.
Where is the rest of the party? Does it really endorse the President’s conspiracy claims?
That Trumps presidency might come to an end in this manner, as now seems likely, shouldnt be a surprise.
Having built an extraordinary political movement that has irretrievably changed the country, not least by building up a cartoonish rendering of the deep state industrial-media complex, its a little ironic that it might come down to how the elite talks him into a sensible transfer of power.
Furthermore, it may not work. Trump is stoking a profound outrage about the election that wont be easily soothed. Millions of Americans simply wont accept that the election wasnt stolen. Violence lurks just beneath the surface.
None of that is good news for Joe Biden, who won a record 74 million popular votes that havent come close to producing the kind of real power he and Democrats yearned for.
There will be much talk about whether he has a mandate for serious change, and his claim to it will be only slightly better than Trumps in 2016, even though he lost the popular vote by about 3 percentage points to Hillary Clinton.
The reason is that four years ago Trump won with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress. He used that constellation to pass company tax cuts and appoint three conservative new justices to the Supreme Court.
Biden, by contrast, looks set to come into office with a hostile Republican Senate and a Supreme Court ready to shut him down at a moments notice.
The new president would also know that he was governing a powder-keg; a nation where almost 70 million Americans voted against him.
Pro Trump supporters in Arizona.
Many observers are predicting that Biden will be able to eke out compromise solutions to some of Americas biggest and most pressing problems with moderate Republicans.
Theres some reason for hope on that score.
Names that might play ball including Lisa Murkowski, the GOP Senator from Alaska, her colleague Susan Collins, fresh from a resounding victory in Maines senate race where she positioned herself as distinct from Trumps MAGA movement, and Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential nominee who is despised by Trumps base but has a loyal following in his home state of Utah.
Bidens famous ability earned over four decades in the Senate to cut deals with the opposition is a handy starting point. But itll be hard going.
At best, he might convince them to engage in modest tax reform, but hell be limited, for instance, on how much pandemic stimulus Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will accept.
Recall that before talks collapsed ahead of the election, Senator McConnell was already unwilling to go beyond $US1.5 trillion. After Biden takes office, McConnell will rediscover religion debt and deficits.
Biden may also have to contend with tough problems on his own side.
Many Democrats are delighted at the thought of ousting Trump, but theyre also deeply unhappy that Tuesdays result hasnt given them the Senate.
They also fell short elsewhere. In the House, Democrats lost several seats, and further down the ballot the party failed to flip a number of state legislatures, adding to the disappointment.
All of those outcomes were the opposite of what polls had led everyone to believe.
So theres almost certain to be a reckoning within the party. On one side you have restive progressives angry that Biden was chosen over a more overtly ambitious policy nominee such as Bernie Sanders.
On the other side, many Democrat middle-roaders will have a mountain of hard evidence in Tuesday’s returns for why Americans aren’t interested in radical change.
“We lost races we shouldn’t have lost,” said Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, struggling for re-election, on a House Democrat’s call to autopsy Tuesday’s result.
“Defund the police almost cost me my race because of an attack ad. Don’t say socialism ever again. We need to get back to basics.
And what of the partys dismal showing among Latin Americans, or African Americans?
One likely casualty could be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who at 80 years old, insists she can lead for another term. But there will be many gunning for her post.
Democrat minority leader Chuck Schumer is another, having failed to help the party win a majority, whose days may be numbered.
Democrats we talked with yesterday were thrilled at the prospect of getting rid of Trump, but they acknowledge that their disastrous congressional elections will thwart the party for at least two more years, noted Washington analysts Greg Valliere.
Republicans we talked with didnt mourn Trumps likely defeat; after all, they will largely control the agenda.
Everyone’s happy. And everyone’s unhappy. What a result.
