US President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks at a rally to challenge the certification of the 2020 US presidential election by the US Congress, in Washington, US, Jan. 6, 2021.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
President Donald Trump lied about the results of the presidential election and bragged about the size of a crowd on Wednesday at a rally where he refused to admit defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
“We will never give up, we will never give in,” Trump told those outside the White House, who cheered him on the process of confirming Biden’s victory at the Electoral College an hour before Congress was due to begin.
“We will stop stealing!” Trump said when he took the stage after the audience waited for his performance while listening to pop songs like “Macho Man,” “Don’t Stop Believing,” and “Tiny Dancer.”
The crippled Republican also reiterated an appeal to his own vice president, Mike Pence, to refuse to accept the validity of election college ballots for Biden from various battlefield states.
Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather in Presidents Park on the Ellipse near the White House for his rally and speech to mark the U.S. Congress’s certification of the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Washington, U.S., on January 6, 2021. dispute.
Jim Bourg | Reuters
Experts say Pence does not have that power when he presides over the joint session of Congress as it confirms the certifications of the election results on Wednesday afternoon.
“I hope Mike is doing the right thing,” Trump said. “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
“He has the absolute right to do it.”
Pence later rejected Trump’s demand that he attempt to block Biden’s confirmation as the next president on Wednesday. Pence said in a letter that he did not believe, as Trump claims, that a vice president has the unilateral power to reject votes from the electoral college for a candidate.
More than a dozen Republican senators and up to 100 or more MPs are expected to challenge the results of some states, but that effort is not expected to thwart Biden’s victory as both the Senate and the House are on track for his victories in those states. states.
Trump claimed, as he has for two months, that he won the popular vote outright, when he actually lost more than 7 million popular votes to the former Democratic vice president.
“We won it by landslide,” he claimed. “These were not close elections.”
Trump also alleged that they were “ cheating ” in the two special Senate elections on Tuesday in Georgia, where Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock was projected to be the winner of Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, and where another Democrat, Jon Ossoff, became the Republican. David led. Perdue in mood matches.
Trump and his allies claim, without any evidence, that there was widespread voting fraud in multiple states, which in turn led to those states allowing their vote from the electoral college to be assigned to Biden. The Democrat won 306 electoral votes, 36 more than he needs to win the White House.
Trump had beaten Hillary Clinton by the exact same margin in 2016.
“They faked an election. They rigged it like never before,” Trump said Wednesday.
However, no court has invalidated a ballot for Biden on a claim made by the Trump campaign or its supporters that fraud was committed.
Trump-related legal efforts challenging Biden’s victory, including a request that the US Supreme Court step into the matter, have been defeated or withdrawn across the board.
The president complained about the Supreme Court, which has three Trump-appointed judges, and said the Supreme Court is “happy to rule against me.”
Trump’s hesitant comments on Wednesday soon turned to asking, “Where’s Hunter?”
He had hoped that the allegations he made about Biden’s son Hunter Biden during the election would help him win a second term.