Trump makes futile last stand to overturn results
as Georgia certifies Biden win
President met with Michigan’s Republican leaders at
White House in desperate bid to subvert democracy
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Sat 21 Nov
2020 00.44 GMTFirst published on Fri 20 Nov 2020 18.30 GMT
. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/20/trump-michigan-republicans-election
Donald Trump at the White House on 26 June.
The Trump campaign is particularly targeting Michigan, which Biden won by
154,000 votes, in the hope that Republicans there will manipulate the electoral
system.
Donald
Trump was on Friday making a futile but dangerous last stand, without precedent
in modern American history, to overturn the result of the presidential election
so he can remain in power.
Even as Joe
Biden’s victory in the state of Georgia was confirmed, the president met with
Republican leaders from Michigan at the White House in an increasingly
desperate bid to subvert democracy after a series of courtroom defeats over
allegations of voter fraud.
The Trump
campaign’s apparent strategy is to persuade Republican-controlled legislatures
in Michigan and other battleground states in the electoral college to set aside
the will of the people and declare Trump the winner, despite officials
declaring it the most secure election in American history.
“The entire
election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned and the
legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump,” Sidney
Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, told the Fox Business Network on Thursday.
Michigan’s
state legislative leaders, the senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, and the
house speaker, Lee Chatfield, both Republicans, visited the White House on
Friday at Trump’s request.
Shirkey was
greeted by protesters and media at Washington’s Reagan international airport.
There were chants of “Certify the results!” and a shout of “Where is the
evidence of fraud?”
However, following
the White House meeting, Shirkey and Chatfield affirmed their commitment to
abide by the electoral process, in an apparent blow to Trump’s efforts.
“We have not yet been made aware of any information
that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative
leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding
Michigan’s electors,” the pair said in a joint statement. “Michigan’s
certification process should be a deliberate process free from threats and
intimidation.”
Most
experts have dismissed Trump’s efforts as political fantasy and probably
unlawful. But they warn that an American president trying to reverse a free and
fair election could poison millions of minds, conditioning his base to lose
faith in democracy and regard Biden as an illegitimate president.
Hillary
Clinton, a former secretary of state defeated by Trump in the 2016 election,
tweeted on Friday: “Protecting one man’s ego is not worth damaging the
legitimacy of our democracy.”
Biden, a
former vice-president, won the election and is preparing to take office on 20
January, but Trump has refused to concede and is searching for a way to
invalidate the results, alleging widespread irregularities without providing
evidence.
Speaking in
the White House briefing room on Friday about an initiative to lower
prescription medicine prices, Trump maintained his baseless claim that he was
the true winner. “Big pharma ran millions of dollars of negative advertisements
against me during the campaign – which I won, by the way,” he told reporters.
“But, you
know, we’ll find that out. Almost 74m votes. We had big pharma against us. We
had the media against us. We had big tech against us. We had a lot of
dishonesty against us.”
Biden
received nearly 6m more votes than Trump but the winner is determined by the
electoral college, where each state’s electoral votes, based largely on
population, are awarded to the winner of a state’s popular vote.
Biden leads
by 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 as states work to certify their results
at least six days before the electoral college convenes on 14 December to
ratify the vote.
The Trump
campaign is particularly targeting Michigan, which Biden won by 154,000 votes,
in the hope that Republicans there will manipulate the electoral system.
Both
Shirkey and Chatfield have previously denied that they might try to overturn
Biden’s win, noting that Michigan law does not allow the legislature to
directly select electors or award them to anyone other than the person who
received the most votes.
Even so,
Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, told the MSNBC TV network:
“It’s incredibly dangerous that they are even entertaining the conversation.
This is an embarrassment to the state.”
Earlier
this week, two Republicans canvassers blocked the certification of votes in
Wayne county, Michigan, where Detroit is located, a majority Black city. They
later relented, amid cries of racism, and the results were certified. It then
emerged that Trump made contact with the canvassers, Monica Palmer and William
Hartmann, on Tuesday to express gratitude for their support.
On
Wednesday, Palmer and Hartmann signed affidavits saying they believed the
county vote “should not be certified” after all. But Michigan’s secretary of
state said they cannot rescind their votes.
Trump’s
dominance of the Republican party is such that few prominent figures have
spoken out again his scorched earth strategy.
However,
Mitt Romney, a senator for Utah and the party’s 2012 presidential nominee,
broke ranks on Thursday. He said: “Having failed to make even a plausible case
of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the president has
now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will
of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse,
more undemocratic action by a sitting American president.”
Georgia’s
secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and Trump supporter, on
Friday certified results that showed Biden won the state by just over 12,600
votes after a manual recount and an audit were conducted. “The numbers reflect
the verdict of the people, not a decision by the secretary of state’s office or
courts, or of either campaigns,” he told reporters.
Trump’s
attempts to reverse his defeat via lawsuits and recounts have met with no
meaningful success. Yet his campaign has not abandoned its offensive in the
courts.
Rudy
Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, said in an hour-and-a-half-long
press conference on Thursday that there are plans to file more lawsuits. He
accused Democrats of masterminding a “national conspiracy” to steal the
election, referencing China, Cuba, the Clinton Foundation, billionaire George
Soros and the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez but offering no proof.
“I know
crimes, I can smell them,” said Giuliani, the former mayor of New York,
sweating profusely as what appeared to be hair dye trickled down his face. “You
don’t have to smell this one, I can prove it to you.” He offered no evidence to
support his claims.
Chris
Krebs, the Trump administration election official fired last week over the
comments about the security of the election, tweeted: “That press conference
was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And
possibly the craziest.”
Biden,
celebrating his 78th birthday – he is the oldest US president-elect in history
– met the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate
minority leader, Chuck Schumer, on Friday after spending most of the week with
advisers planning his administration, despite the refusal of the Trump
administration to cooperate with his team, even over dealing with the
coronavirus pandemic.
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