Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

News

Trump Claims Victory, Says He Will Dispute Election Count At Supreme Court

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump departs on travel to the Camp David presidential retreat from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 1, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed he had won the US election, despite the final results not yet being given, and said he would go to the Supreme Court to dispute the counting of votes.

“We did win this election,” Trump said in an extraordinary speech from the ceremonial East Room of the White House. “This is a fraud on the American public.”

The Republican, who according to initial results is in a neck-and-neck race with Democrat Joe Biden, said he would go to court and “we want all voting to stop.”

He appeared to mean stopping the counting of mail-in ballots which can be legally accepted by state election boards after Tuesday’s election, provided they were sent in time.

The issue could become crucial in the states still tabulating votes in a very tight contest.

Democrats are widely thought to have cast mail-in ballots more than Trump’s supporters.

Trump made his premature victory claim — unprecedented for a US president — shortly after 2:20 a.m. (0720 GMT), as states across the huge country worked to count the votes.

A record number of ballots were cast before Election Day, totaling more than 100 million, due to fears of congregating in polling stations in person during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump began with a sometimes rambling statement expressing disappointment that he had believed he was on a road to certain victory but that results then stopped coming in and the Republican-friendly state of Arizona was called for Biden.

“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump said without fully explaining what he meant.

“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” he said.

Trump said “we will be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”

There was immediate backlash from Trump’s own Republican backers.

“It’s a bad strategic decision. It’s a bad political decision,” Chris Christie, a Trump advisor said of the middle-of-the-night speech.

AFP.

___

Follow us on Twitter at @thesignalng

Copyright 2020 SIGNAL. Permission to use portions of this article is granted provided appropriate credits are given to www.signalng.com and other relevant sources.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Advertisement

Related

World

US President Joe Biden belatedly joined TikTok on Sunday, marking his debut on the social media platform with a 26-second video. The move comes...

World

America’s oldest president, Joe Biden, earned backing from an unexpected supporter due to his age: The Democrat was “not too old” to run for...

News

A federal judge on Monday set a date of March 4, 2024, for Donald Trump’s election subversion conspiracy trial — placing one of the...

News

Donald Trump, a former US president, claimed on Tuesday that he had received a letter from prosecutors indicating that he was likely to face...

Copyright ©