President Trump insisted that he had won the election, accusing his opponents of trying to “steal” the result by counting late votes without offering evidence for his allegations.
It comes as the president and his allies engaged in a string of legal challenges in battleground states and flooded airwaves with claims of wrongdoing.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” said Trump during a Thursday evening appearance in the White House briefing room. “If you count the illegal votes … They can try to steal the election from us … if you count the votes that came in late.”
His words came in stark contrast to Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who earlier in the day had called for patience.
With all but a handful of states decided, Biden has a distinct advantage over the president. Trump’s path to victory has narrowed so that he must win all four remaining battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
Even so, Trump announced that he had “won by historic numbers.”
“There’s tremendous litigation going on,” he said. “And this is a case where they’re trying to steal an election. They’re trying to rig an election.”
Earlier, aides said the president was spending the day making calls and monitoring results. He had not been seen in public since making a claim of victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning before any major outlet had projected a winner reaching the 270-electoral vote threshold.
However, he kept up a steady Twitter commentary amid a string of lawsuits demanding that counts be halted or subject to stricter scrutiny in key states.
“STOP THE FRAUD!” he tweeted in all caps, echoing his campaign’s claim that Democrats are attempting to steal the election. At other times, he also demanded that counts be stopped, apparently suggesting that legally cast ballots be excluded.
Twitter added notes warning users that the contents of some of his messages were disputed and might be misleading.
STOP THE FRAUD!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2020
In the briefing room, he offered more details of his campaign’s complaints about counts.
He said observers were not being given proper access to the count in Philadelphia despite a court ruling and, in some cases, were being kept too far away to see what was happening.
“So far that people are using binoculars to try and see,” he said.
In Georgia, he said, ballots arriving after Election Day were being accepted, contrary to state law. And he said in Detroit there were unexplained delays in delivering votes to counting centers, which, in one case, had its windows covered with cardboard.
“So, they wanted to protect and block the counting area. They didn’t want anybody seeing the counting even though these were observers who are legal observers and were supposed to be there,” Trump said.
Officials have not produced evidence of wrongdoing. And some legal experts have suggested the challenges have little prospect of success.
Instead, Republican strategist Brendan Steinhauser was among those who said it was the last gambit by a candidate who knew he was defeated.
“I think he is delaying the inevitable,” he said. “It’s a way for him to feel good about losing. To say he didn’t lose fair and square.”
A new poll also suggests few people in the United States agree with the president’s assessment of the race. Only 16% of adults, including 7% of Democrats and 30% of Republicans, accept Trump’s election night victory declaration, according to the survey of 1,115 people by Reuters/Ipsos.
