Trump, in Video From White House, Delivers a
46-Minute Diatribe on the ‘Rigged’ Election
The president posted a recording on social media of
what he said “may be the most important speech I’ve ever made.” It was filled
with false allegations about voter fraud.
Michael D.
Shear
By Michael
D. Shear
Dec. 2,
2020, 7:59 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON
— President Trump on Wednesday released a 46-minute videotaped speech that
denounced a “rigged” election and was filled with lies the day after his own
attorney general joined election officials across the country in attesting to
his defeat.
Mr. Trump
recorded what he said “may be the most important speech I’ve ever made” in the
Diplomatic Room of the White House and delivered it behind a lectern bearing
the presidential seal. He then posted a two-minute version on Twitter, with a
link to the full version on his Facebook page.
The
president once again refused to concede defeat in his bid for re-election
almost a month after Election Day, repeating a long list of false assertions
about voter fraud and accusing Democrats of a conspiracy to steal the presidency.
Twitter
quickly labeled the post “disputed.” Facebook added a note that President-elect
Joseph R. Biden Jr., who received almost 81 million votes and 306 electoral
votes, is the projected winner of the election.
The video,
which a White House official said was recorded last week, was the in-person
embodiment of Mr. Trump’s staccato tweets over the past three weeks: one
falsehood after another about voting irregularities in swing states, attacks on
state officials and signature verifications, and false accusations against
Democrats.
The
president’s rambling assertions in the video were drastically undercut on
Tuesday, when Attorney General William P. Barr told The Associated Press that
despite inquiries by the Justice Department and the F.B.I., “to date, we have
not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the
election.”
The same
day, a Republican election official in Georgia blamed him for inciting violence
and a wave of death threats.
“Mr.
President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” said Gabriel
Sterling, a voting systems manager in Georgia. “Stop inspiring people to commit
potential acts of violence.”
At the end
of the video, Mr. Trump improbably described himself as the defender of
America’s election system, saying he had been told that the single most
important accomplishment of his presidency would be protecting the integrity of
the voting system.
It was
unclear why Mr. Trump waited until Wednesday to release the video. But he made
it public after a series of rebukes by members of his own party, who have
increasingly abandoned him as he refuses to acknowledge the results of the
election.
The president’s
legal team, led by his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has lost dozens of
lawsuits in courts across the country while making wild allegations without any
proof to back them up.
Some of the
president’s key Republican allies on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have urged him
to move on in recent days. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority
leader, who has been conspicuously silent about Mr. Trump’s claims, finally
referred this week to the “new administration” that would be taking over next
year, a clear signal to Mr. Trump that his time in office was coming to an end.
But he
retains the support of a core group of voters who quickly responded to his
latest attack on the election. Within a few hours, his tweet had been “liked”
by almost 134,000 Twitter users, and his Facebook video had been shared 93,000
times.
Michael D.
Shear is a White House correspondent. He previously worked at The Washington
Post and was a member of their Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the
Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. @shearm
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