Janjivan Bureau / Washington : US President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that a “major fraud” is being perpetrated on the American people and said he will fight the election in the Supreme Court, even as the counting of votes were in progress in the battleground states.
Addressing a select gathering of his supporters in the East Room of the White House at 2 am on Wednesday, Trump asserted that he has won the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, a Republican, is being challenged by Democratic Party’s nominee Joe Biden.
“All of a sudden everything just stopped. 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,” Trump said, without citing any evidence of a fraud in the electoral process.
The presidential election is headed to a nail-biter, with Biden having won 225 electoral college votes and Trump following with 213. The winner should have at least 270 electoral college votes out of the 538.
However, the president is currently leading in other major battle ground States like Pennsylvania where projections are yet to be made by the US media outlets.
“Our goal now is to ensure integrity, for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud on our nation. We want law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” Trump said, amidst applause from the audience.
Trump, 74, said that this is a very sad moment for the country. We will win this. And as far as I’m concerned, we already have won, claimed the president.
Thanking American people for their tremendous support, Trump said that millions and millions of people voted for him. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it,” he said.
“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything,” he said, adding that he and his team were getting ready to go out and celebrate the victory. The citizens of this country have come out in record numbers, he added.
“There’s never been anything like it to support our incredible movement. We won states that we weren’t expected to win,” he said.
Trump said that he had impressive victories in Florida, Ohio and Texas. He said that he has already won in States like Georgia, and North Carolina where his rivals cannot catch up in the rest of the counting of votes.
Arizona, which has been projected to be won by Biden, continues to be in play, he said, adding that he is winning big in Pennsylvania.
“We’re up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania. These aren’t even close. With 64 per cent of the vote in, it is going to be almost impossible to catch and we’re coming into good Pennsylvania areas where they happen to like your president. So, we’ll probably expand that. We’re winning Michigan. Almost 300,000 votes and 65 per cent of the voters. We are winning Wisconsin, said the president.
“So when you take those three states in particular, and you take all of the others we had such a big night. You just take a look at all of these states that we’ve won tonight. And then you take a look at the kind of margins that we’ve won. All of a sudden, I said what happened to the election, it’s off,” he said.
Alleging that his challenger knew that they couldn’t win, Trump said: So they said, let’s go to court. I have been saying this from the day I heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots. I said exactly because either they were going to win, or if they didn’t win. They’ll take us to court.”
In his brief remarks, Vice President Mike Pence said that he truly believes that they are on the road to victory.
“We’re gonna remain vigilant. As the President said, the right to vote has been at the center of our democracy since the founding of this nation. We are gonna protect the integrity of the vote,” he said.
