President Trump promised to fight on after media organizations declared Democratic nominee Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election.
His declaration raises the prospect of weeks more legal wrangling, recounts, and a bitter fight over the White House. So far, little evidence of fraud has emerged.
“The simple fact is this election is far from over,” Trump said in a statement Saturday. “Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor.”
Trump was at his Virginia golf club on Saturday morning as news emerged that media organizations were forecasting a Biden win. Agencies, including the Associated Press, called the election after ballots counted in Pennsylvania suggested there was no chance of Trump taking the state and collecting the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.
For four years, Trump has tweeted and litigated his way through government, and he fought the closing stages of the election in the same way. His team spent the 72 hours after Election Day laying the groundwork for a string of legal challenges to results.
“The plan is to fight for everything,” said a senior campaign adviser.
At the same time, however, another camp within the White House has begun quietly trying to prepare the president for the prospect of defeat.
On Saturday, Trump said more legal challenges would be launched on Monday and accused his opponent of rushing to declare victory.
“So what is Biden hiding? I will not rest until the American people have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”
However, legal experts suggest the president has little chance of overturning enough votes to make a difference.
Robert Shapiro, professor of political science at Columbia University, said Trump’s Hail Mary play was to keep the courts busy until December 14, when Electoral College electors are due to meet to officially select the 46th president. Sufficient confusion might allow the White House to pressure Republican states to choose Trump supporters who will ignore ballot tallies.
“At a minimum Trump can muddy the waters and claim victory, leave the White House as someone who has been victimized by the establishment and then can go out and set up a media empire, make a lot of money,” he said. “Then in 2024 he can decide if he wants to run for election again or promote Ivanka or Don Jr., or anoint someone else.”
Yet, the result was closer than many thought before the polls closed. He hung on to Florida, and hopes of a Biden landslide evaporated as the first results showed a tight race.
Analysts said that after four years in power, after the tweetstorms, the tax overhaul, the China deal, standoffs with Iran and North Korea, and a newly soaring economy, it all came down to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump and his campaign offered voters a clear choice between reopening the economy or months or years of lockdowns under a President Biden.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows spelled it out barely a week before the election.
“We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union.
He was speaking aloud what many in the administration had long thought. And in doing so, he was describing the vast gulf in attitudes to the virus between the two campaigns as the death toll surpassed 230,000.
While Biden scaled back his campaign and public appearances, Trump pushed ahead with a busy schedule of public appearances. Even a bout of COVID-19 at the start of October only kept him away from work for a little over a week.
Campaign strategists said they had believed voters would respond to rallies just as they had in 2016.
“I just left two states now that are locked down. They’re not happy about it. … You turn on the news, all you hear is ‘COVID, COVID, COVID,’” said Trump at a rally in Florida during the final weekend. “Come Nov. 4, you’re not going to hear much about it.”
But it allowed the Biden campaign to paint Trump as a leader out of touch with ordinary voters living in fear of the virus.
“This rally isn’t for Floridians; it’s to fuel his own ego, with no regard for the issues working Floridians face every day,” said the Biden campaign.
There were other setbacks along the way. Vigorous fundraising by his opponent saw the Trump campaign lose its financial advantage, forcing it to pull TV advertisements in a number of states during the final push.
Efforts to turn the conversation to allegations of corruption among the Biden family also fell flat after being mostly ignored by the media. A first debate performance in which he continually interrupted Biden in an effort to throw the former vice president off his stride backfired, failing to force Biden to make a big mistake while making Trump look like a crude bully.
And the rallies that Trump used so effectively in 2016 to generate television coverage had lost some of their novelty. While they excited the Trump base, his speeches held little to convince wavering voters to switch sides.
