Summary
It’s time to close our live coverage of US politics for the day today, on a day when…
- Trump did not concede, while his supporters came to Washington
- Trump came out to meet them – sort of, before going to his golf club
- Joe Biden reportedly came closer to naming key cabinet picks
and
We’ll be back tomorrow for more live coverage. Thanks for reading.
Our Washington bureau chief had a ride in the presidential motorcade today, as White House pool reporter. Here’s another taste of his sketch, now launched…
The motorcade did a lap of Freedom Plaza, where people had climbed walls and other structures for a better view, and turned at the Ronald Reagan Building. Trump’s own hotel was not far away. There were chants of “USA! USA!”, “We want Trump! We want Trump!” and, somewhat optimistically, “Four more years! Four more years!”
It was reminiscent of Trump’s strange pre-election drive-by of supporters outside Walter Reed military hospital, when he was under treatment for Covid-19. A few enthusiasts chased the motorcade, perhaps hoping for a last glimpse of Maga magic before the lights go out.
The view from the motorcade was a reminder that, having spent four years surrounded by sycophantic cabinet members, soaking up the adulation of crowds at endless rallies and consuming constant praise from conservative media, Trump may have thought he was truly loved by the vast majority of Americans.
The election result would have come as a very rude awakening. No wonder he still can’t quite believe it.
Trump v Fox News, again
As is increasingly common, Donald Trump has taken a shot at his erstwhile friends at Fox News who, he says, like “the Fake News Networks aren’t showing these massive gatherings” in Washington DC.
“Instead they have their reporters standing in almost empty streets. We now have SUPPRESSION BY THE PRESS. MAGA!”
Apart from the observation that Trump’s claim the press is somehow suppressing him might in one admittedly rather sophomoric way make him a sort of President Dennis the Anarcho-Syndicalist Peasant, it should also be said that it isn’t remotely true. News coverage of events in DC in support of Trump today has been constant, if not wall-to-wall.
Trump has been attacking Fox News a lot lately, including claiming its ratings are tanking now he is in great peril – a claim Fox News disputes.
The Guardian has asked a Fox News spokeswoman for comment on the president’s latest barb, and will update you if comment is forthcoming.
In the meantime… this:
Agence France Presse has an interesting report about Christopher Miller, Donald Trump’s new acting defense secretary, indicating that he could accelerate the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the Middle East.
All wars must end,” Miller said in his first message to the US armed services. He said the US is committed to defeating al-Qaida, 19 years after the 9/11 attacks, and is “on the verge” of doing so.
“Many are weary of war – I’m one of them,” Miller wrote in the message, dated Friday but posted early Saturday on the defense department website.
“But this is the critical phase in which we transition our efforts from a leadership to supporting role. Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”
Miller did not mention specific troop deployments but appeared to single out Afghanistan and Iraq, where US troops were deployed after 9/11.
A former US special forces officer and counterterrorism expert, Miller was named to lead the Department of Defense after Trump fired Mark Esper.
Trump has been pressing to pull forces out of both countries since he came into office four years ago. Any such action would have to come in the 67 days before Biden takes office on 20 January.
Trump has tweeted that he wants the troops “home by Christmas”. National security adviser Robert O’Brien has said the goal is to cut to 2,500 in Afghanistan by February.
Critics say this removes any leverage on the Taliban insurgents to halt attacks that continue amid scant progress in peace talks with the Afghan government.
From the Trump motorcade…
Our Washington bureau chief has been traveling with Donald Trump today, as White House pool reporter. Here’s a taste of David’s sketch, coming soon in full…
It was a jarring few minutes of seeing the world through Donald Trump’s eyes and indulging his fantasies.
As the White House pool reporter, taking a turn to shadow the US president for print media outlets, the Guardian found itself at the back of Trump’s motorcade rolling out of the executive mansion grounds on to Pennsylvania Avenue.
At 10am the dozen black shiny vehicles with flashing blue and red lights were greeted by a sight seldom seen in Washington, usually a Democratic bastion: hundreds of Trump supporters, cheering and clapping, whistling and whooping, punching the air and hailing their idol as if he had in fact won a glorious victory over Joe Biden.
What a difference from the previous Saturday when Trump returned from a round of golf to be jeered and booed by denizens of the capital who had just learned that he had been fired by the electorate. Some foreign observers compared the scene to Paris after the liberation or a Middle East autocracy that had overthrown its dictator.
But a week later, with Trump adding election defeat to the coronavirus disaster and climate crisis as truths that must be denied, supporters – and far-right groups including the extremist Proud Boys – poured into town to endorse his baseless claims that the election was stolen from him…
More to come from David. In the meantime, here’s our current lead report, including some of David’s work for the pool…
Ronny Jackson, the White House doctor who put cauliflower in Donald Trump’s mashed potatoes, was picked for secretary of veterans’ affairs, saw that prize snatched away amid a Washington scandal, left the capital under something of a cloud and then ran successfully for Congress in Texas … seems to have no shame:
We cannot let the Radical Left steal this election! I support @realDonaldTrump because he fights every day for our country, despite all the nonsense the lying media has put him through. We have your back, Mr. President!
— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJackson4TX) November 14, 2020
It should be noted that Jackson has a history of being, uh, economical with the actualité when it comes to Trump, what with having insisted in January 2018 that if the president “had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old”.
Of which – about that cauliflower:
Musa al-Gharbi writes…
The prevailing narrative of the last five years has been that Trump seized and maintains power by appealing to the desires of white voters and men (and especially, white men) to preserve the patriarchy and white supremacy. However, it seems difficult to square these talking points with the preliminary exit poll data from this year’s presidential race.
Anti-Trump protester describes scuffle with supporters of president
Activists in Washington on Saturday to protest Trump’s attacks on the election and refusal to concede defeat by Joe Biden say supporters of the president attacked them.
Sunsara Taylor, a spokeswoman and co-founder of RefuseFascism.org, told the Guardian her group was part of a nationwide protest to “stand on the victory of his electoral defeat … to expose, oppose Trump’s attempt to overturn this election.”
After RefuseFacism.org announced their protest, Taylor said, word of Saturday’s pro-Trump Million MAGA March emerged.
“We thought it was even more important that they not be allowed to dominate the public square and the public discourse,” she said.
Around 11.15am this morning, Taylor said, around 15 to 20 activists convened at the west end of Freedom Plaza, near the White House, and started setting up signs. Because there were a lot of Trump supporters around it was “elbow-to-elbow” crowded, she said, so the activists decided to move into the street.
“His mob of supporters descended on us as soon as we set off,” Taylor said. “They assaulted some of us. They grabbed. They shoved. Every single person had hands put on them by multiple MAGA meatheads, but we held it together. We marched together. We chanted: ‘Trump pack your shit!’”
The #MillionMAGAMarch is officially starting in about half an hour, but violence has already broken out.
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) November 14, 2020
I’ll have a complete recording up later, but @RefuseFascism came to protest and was physically pushed out by Trump supporters. Some fighting ensued. pic.twitter.com/DdKgb49gLS
“It was like a pack of piranhas who circled,” Taylor said, adding that Trump supporters voiced anti-gay, racist and misogynistic insults. “It’s really in keeping with Trump, who celebrated white supremacy and sexual assault.
“We raised our banners. We raised our signs. We chanted and when it became clear that they were so physical, we moved together … and moved further down the street.”
Over the course of several blocks, she said, about 100 Trump supporters swarmed the anti-fascist protesters.
“At times, there’d be five guys grabbing one woman,” Taylor said.
No one was seriously injured. Taylor’s group then regathered, she said, in Black Lives Matter Plaza, the stretch of 16 Street NW near the White House which was renamed this summer.
Trump is back at the White House, Guardian Washington bureau chief and today’s pool reporter David Smith notes, to “cheers and whoops on 15th Street from flag-waving supporters on the corner near the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture”, but no dramatic hoo-hah among the Trump supporters gathered in Washington today.
He tweeted either from the motorcade or as he left it, too:
People are not going to stand for having this Election stolen from them by a privately owned Radical Left company, Dominion, and many other reasons! https://t.co/RMOa4jKZwA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 14, 2020
Updated
Cuomo: New York schools could stay open … maybe
Breaking sideways from Washington under Trump to the US under Covid, Newsday reports on an Andrew Cuomo press conference this morning that contained remarks meant to help parents driven spare by the prospect of schools closing again on Monday, a dread prospect raised by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday … but which didn’t clear anything up at all, really:
Cuomo said he believed New York’s Covid-19 infection rate will continue to rise through the holidays, even as he offered a suggestion that he said might prevent the widespread closure of schools in New York City.
De Blasio warned on Friday that public schools could indefinitely shut down in-person learning if the seven-day average positivity rate hit at least 3% citywide. The trendline has shown the rate edging closer to that threshold, which was set in September when de Blasio reopened the schools.
Cuomo suggested that the city add another measure to its monitoring of the virus – that of the infection rate in each school. The measure would require ramping up testing in schools, but doing so might establish that any given school is not the cause of virus spread in the community. Consequently, schools could remain open, Cuomo said.
“If the school’s positivity rate is lower than the community, the school is not part of the problem,” Cuomo said. “I think New York City should consider this.”
Cuomo also said children might be safer in a school with a low infection rate, rather than closing schools, which would leave kids on the streets of a neighborhood with a higher infection rate.
So far, so typical … writes a typical New York parent with three little kids in school, painfully aware De Blasio and Cuomo rarely speak from the same script at the best of times. Which these aren’t.
Donald Trump is on his way back to Washington and the White House, having visited his golf course in Sterling, Virginia. Our DC bureau chief, David Smith, is with him as pool reporter and sends this brief dispatch:
Motorcade departed the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling at 2.26pm. Each vehicle was greeted by fervent cheers from supporters standing outside, but the press vans received some boos. Motorcade is now rolling towards the White House.
When Trump left the White House earlier, he took a brief spin past the crowds of his supporters then assembling for their events in Washington today. Here’s David’s account of that:
[Trump] emerged from the south portico at 10am wearing a red hat, blue jacket and blue trousers. He appeared to be holding a newspaper. He got inside the presidential limousine and the motorcade headed out to Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was greeted by applause, cheers, waving and whistles from hundreds of Trump supporters lining both sides of the street. They punched the air, took pictures with phones and held signs that included “Best prez ever” and “Stop the steal”.
The crowd also waved flags including “Trump 2020: Keep America great”, “Trump 2020: No more bullshit”, “All aboard the Trump train!” and “Trump 2020: Pro life, pro God, pro gun”.
The motorcade passed the Willard Hotel and did a circuit of Freedom Plaza, where people climbed on walls and other structures for a better view. Some ran excitedly after the motorcade. There were chants of “USA! USA!”, “We want Trump! We want Trump!” and “Four more years! Four more years!”
Many people wore red, white and blue flag patterns. One man had on a t-shirt that said: “I’m deplorable.” A stand had been set up to sell merchandise as if at a Trump rally. US park police were present. It was not possible to see how [Trump] responded to the crowd. The motorcade is rolling on through Virginia.
Video taken outside the motorcade did show how Trump reacted:
President Trump just rolled by the Washington DC MAGA #StopTheSteal March. Wait for it!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/2Ofs2o6Z4s
— Dr Taylor Marshall 🙏🏻🇺🇸 (@TaylorRMarshall) November 14, 2020
In Washington, from where Samira Sadeque has been reporting for us, there have been some clashes between Trump supporters in town to march in support of the president and counter-protesters standing against them. Samira sends the following from right alongside a main march route, via somewhat spotty DC wifi. Think of it almost as reporting by telegram…
…mini-confrontation broke out between Antifa & Trumpers ... “fuck antifa” chants ... cops had to separate the two groups ... Trump supporters screaming and yelling at counter-protesters who were seen standing on the other side of a fence peacefully … Proud Boys are here.
A standard-issue ordinarily extraordinary intervention from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman-elect from Georgia who has…
… faced scrutiny for racist and bigoted statements and her support of QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory rooted in antisemitic tropes whose followers believe Donald Trump is secretly fighting against a cabal of Democrats, billionaires and celebrities engaged in child trafficking, and which the FBI has identified the movement as a potential domestic terrorism threat, and it has repeatedly inspired vigilante violence.
Sam Levin wrote that description of Greene on election night. I pulled it out, for emphasis. Anyway, there’s this:
I work out everyday in a CrossFit gym that is open.
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 14, 2020
With people.
Gyms are small businesses that have been devastated by the government mandated shut downs.
In DC, NOTHING is open bc of Democrat tyrannical control.
So here’s my hotel room workout.
We must FULLY reopen! pic.twitter.com/oDsgGyhRvx
And among other responses there is this, from Katie Barlow of @SCOTUSblog:
“Hi, fellow Georgian here. I know Georgians hate it when folks from out of town come visit and then lie about our beautiful state. Same goes for DC. I just called your hotel, and the gym is open from 5am to 11pm. We’ve also got plenty of other options open. Stop lying.”
Such is the state of some of US politics in 2020.
Democrats focus resources on Georgia Senate runoffs
Donald Trump may have forced a recount of the votes in Georgia that helped end his presidency, but the activists who organised the surge in turnout that helped defeat him have already turned their attention to two elections that will decide who controls the US Senate and the course of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Tens of millions of dollars are pouring in to the Georgia runoff races, which can be expected to draw Biden back to the campaign trail as voters have the opportunity to make history by defeating the state’s two Republican senators to give the new president control of both houses of Congress.
Samira Sadeque reports again from Washington, where she’s out and about with the Trump supporters who are rallying in support of their president…
Jerry Babb and Robert Beckner are here from Sarasota, Florida – and they’re already celebrating.
Babb, 60, says Trump is the best president in his lifetime, because he “did everything he said he would” in office. He’s here to support the president in return, he says.
Beckner has started a petition for an election recount which he says already has 18,000 signatures. Both men believe a recount will happen, “absolutely”.
Here’s some video of the moment earlier when Trump took a drive-by of the protests…
While Trump clings to power and his supporters gather in Washington, Joe Biden gets on with his transition work, leading to one of my favourite political parlour games – guessing who might get the key posts.
We’ve reported below on reports about two possible appointments being bruited about the Beltway at the moment, Michelle Flournoy for defense and Susan Rice for state. Pete Buttigieg is also being talked about, for ambassador to the United Nations perhaps, having been ambassador to Fox News – in the sense of administering diplomatically put but nonetheless lethal skewerings, that is – during the election campaign.
Reuters, meanwhile, has this from Biden Central in Wilmington, Delaware today:
Trump’s refusal to accept defeat has stalled the official transition. The federal agency that releases funding to an incoming president-elect, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognise Biden’s victory, denying him access to federal office space and resources.
Biden, who will meet with advisers about the transition on Saturday in his home state of Delaware, has pressed ahead with the process, identifying legislative priorities, reviewing federal agency policies and preparing to fill thousands of jobs in the new administration.
The Democrat took a bike ride on Saturday morning with his wife Jill and some secret service agents at Cape Henlopen State Park.
A reporter called out “Are you any closer to making a cabinet decision?”
Biden replied, “Yes” as he rode by.
Such larks. And speaking of larks, David Smith, our Washington bureau chief, is currently holding outside Trump’s golf club in Virginia, where David is on pool reporting duty. Here’s his report from this morning, on a possible trap awaiting Biden back in DC:
Donald Trump continues to rage against the dying light of his US presidency, falsely claiming to be the victim of mass voter fraud and praising rightwingers and conspiracy theorists who gathered in Washington on Saturday to echo his fabrication.
Trump has still not conceded that he lost the 3 November election to Joe Biden, despite a protracted count showing the Democrat has comfortably secured the electoral college votes needed for victory, seizing formerly safe Republican states in Arizona and possibly Georgia, where a hand recount is under way.
Across the US, Biden has more than 5m more votes.
The president has refused to cooperate with a transition of power to Biden, who will enter the White House on 20 January, or even provide his successor with national security briefings. Trump continued on Saturday to claim, without evidence, that the election was “rigged” and that he is the rightful winner.
Updated
At least one clash between Donald Trump supporters and counter-protestors on the streets of Washington has been reported.
More from Samira Sadeque in Washington, with the Trump supporters …
Stevan Roknic, from Hobart, Indiana, a son of Yugoslav immigrants, said he flew in for the rally, spending close to $400 to be able to attend.
“We know Trump won the election,” he said, adding: “The mail-in ballots were a bad idea.” He believes that “Covid-19 was orchestrated so that Democrats could have a easier time winning the election”.
Covid-19 is real, he says, but it has been “over-politicized” for the sake of the election.
Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich reports that former US president Barack Obama is pushing for Susan Rice to be named secretary of state in Joe Biden’s cabinet, citing multiple sources.
“Sources say Rice would bring diversity, deep institutional knowledge and experience – and was already vetted while under consideration for Biden’s VP pick,” Heinrich wrote on Saturday. “She also has necessary clearances and would blunt GSA ascertainment delays.”
She continued in a series of tweets:
Sources say Rice would bring diversity, deep institutional knowledge and experience – and was already vetted while under consideration for Biden’s VP pick. She also has necessary clearances and would blunt GSA ascertainment delays.
Her handling of Michael Flynn would also signal to the world that things are “going back to normal” under Biden’s administration – but some democrats are concerned she would have a confirmation problem because of Benghazi. People closer to Biden dismissed the thought.
Further – I’m told Sen. Chris Coons is very much reaching for the role, and his appointment would not deplete democratic ranks because the governor could tap Lisa Blunt-Rochester to replace him. Other considerations include Tony Blinken, William Burns, Sen. Chris Murphy.
Samira Sadeque is out on the streets of Washington for us, reporting on the various marches in support of Donald Trump. Here’s her first quick dispatch …
Mike Sembert from Fort Meyers, Florida, says he’s here because “We need our president back and we need four more years.” He believes the election was rigged and that there’s no way there were legal votes from “illegals and dead people”.
Many attendees are chanting “Four more years” and “All lives matter”, the latter a rallying cry for opponents or critics of the Black Lives Matter movement against police violence and for racial justice.
Biden poised to pick first female secretary of defense – report
Joe Biden is reportedly poised to choose a woman to lead the Pentagon, an historic decision.
The president-elect’s expected selection, Michele Flournoy, is described by the Associated Press as a “a politically moderate Pentagon veteran … regarded by US officials and political insiders as a top choice for the position.”
Flournoy’s potential selection would follow extensive upheaval at the Pentagon under Donald Trump, as five men have held the top role. On Monday, Trump fired Mark Esper, after he resisted ideas including using the military against civilian protesters.
Trump loyalists have been placed in key Pentagon roles. Anthony Tata, a retired army brigadier and Fox News commentator who once referred to Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader” was installed at the Pentagon policy department. Tata was previously unable to get Senate confirmation, because old tweets surfaced which espoused Islamophobic opinions.
Kash Patel, who in his former job as a Republican congressional aide played an integral role in the push to discredit the investigation of Russian election meddling, was made chief of staff to Chris Miller, the new acting defense secretary.
Should Flournoy be confirmed, she could be confronted with thinning budgets and a possible military role in distributing a Covid-19 vaccine. The 59-year-old is reported to support “strong military cooperation abroad”, and first worked at the Pentagon in the 1990s, rising to undersecretary of defense for policy between 2009 and 2012.
She is presently on the board of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, potentially spurring questions from lawmakers, but her moderate positions are expected to attract strong bipartisan support.
Out of his bunker for a second straight day, Donald Trump made a deliberate pass by his supporters in town for today’s Maga rallies in his presidential motorcade before veering off toward Trump National in Sterling, Virginia.
More details from the White House pool report:
POTUS emerged from the south portico at 10am wearing a red hat, blue jacket and blue trousers. He appeared to be holding a newspaper. He got inside the presidential limousine and the motorcade headed out to Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was greeted by applause, cheers, waving and whistles from hundreds of Trump supporters lining both sides of the street. They punched the air, took pictures with phones and held signs that included ‘Best prez ever’ and ‘Stop the steal’.
The crowd also waved flags including ‘Trump 2020: Keep America great’, ‘Trump 2020: No more bullshit’, ‘All aboard the Trump train!’, ‘Women for Trump’ and ‘Trump 2020: Pro life, pro God, pro gun’.
The motorcade passed the Willard Hotel and did a circuit of Freedom Plaza, where people had climbed on walls and other structures for a better view. Some ran excitedly after the motorcade. There were chants of “USA! USA!”, “We want Trump! We want Trump!” and “Four more years! Four more years!”
Many people wore red, white and blue flag patterns. One man had on a t-shirt that said: “I’m deplorable.” A stand had been set up to sell merchandise as if at a Trump rally. US park police were present. It was not possible to see how POTUS responded to the crowd. The motorcade is rolling on through Virginia.
President Donald J Trump just drove by at the Million Maga March!!! pic.twitter.com/kAb7p7t7is
— Million Maga March (@MilionMagaMarch) November 14, 2020
Updated
In light of expected events in Washington today, we have some necessary reading this morning from Professor Laurence H Tribe of Harvard University …
Imagine raiding Versailles with a herd of bulls. You probably won’t make it past the gates, and you certainly won’t wind up King of France, but you would irreparably trample the gardens and might well erode the foundation. That’s more or less how I view Donald Trump’s current assault on the election.
'Failure is not an option': Biden Covid advisers speak to Guardian
President-elect Joe Biden has set up a 13-member coronavirus advisory board will play a high-profile role in helping the Biden-Harris administration contain the coronavirus pandemic in the US as it enters its deadliest phase so far.
“Failure is not an option here,” Dr Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota and a member of the advisory board, told the Guardian. “We have to do whatever we can to reduce the impact of the virus on our society.”
The high-powered board, which includes a former US surgeon general, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, leading virologists and experts in bio-defense and the health of marginalized populations, is an about-face from the Trump administration.
Trump routinely muzzled scientists, pushed misinformation, sought to change scientific guidance for political purposes and shunted much of the Covid-19 response to states.
“The work has been going on for months,” said Dr Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor of infectious diseases at NYU Langone Health’s department of medicine, and a member of the advisory board. “The role of the advisory board is sort of bigger picture, to have a second set of eyes on these plans to provide feedback and to be thinking big ideas.”
A full hand recount of votes in the presidential race is under way in Georgia, where Joe Biden led Donald Trump by more than 14,000 votes with 99% of precincts reporting as of Friday afternoon.
But that didn’t stop Trump from taking a flamethrower to the statewide audit process moments ago via his preferred medium.
“The Consent Decree signed by the Georgia Secretary of State, with the approval of Governor @BrianKempGA, at the urging of @staceyabrams, makes it impossible to check & match signatures on ballots and envelopes, etc. They knew they were going to cheat. Must expose real signatures!” he tweeted. “What are they trying to hide. They know, and so does everyone else. EXPOSE THE CRIME!”
The Consent Decree signed by the Georgia Secretary of State, with the approval of Governor @BrianKempGA, at the urging of @staceyabrams, makes it impossible to check & match signatures on ballots and envelopes, etc. They knew they were going to cheat. Must expose real signatures!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 14, 2020
....What are they trying to hide. They know, and so does everyone else. EXPOSE THE CRIME!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 14, 2020
Last week, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger announced that officials would recount ballots by hand statewide with the goal of completing the process by 20 November, the election certification deadline.
You can watch a live stream of the hand recount here.
Fox News pushes Trump's false election claims
Fox News is coming in for criticism over a promotional video in which its opinion hosts echo Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden but which he refuses to concede.
“Oh my god,” Andrew Laurence of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group, wrote on Twitter. “Fox is running a promo of their ‘opinion’ hosts casting doubt on the election results and I guess trying to keep their rabid viewers sated.”
In the short video, an announcer introduces a montage of “the voices America trusts”. Laura Ingraham is shown first, saying: “These legal efforts are critical.”
That is a reference to cases Trump aides have mounted in key battleground states, alleging without significant evidence voter fraud and ballot irregularities and seeking to overturn results via recounts. Such efforts have met with little success and experts say they are almost guaranteed to fail. Trump is more than 5m votes down in the popular vote and lost the electoral college to Biden by 306-232, the same score by which he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, in what he has claimed was a landslide.
On the Fox News video, Tucker Carlson appears next.
“There are apparent irregularities,” he says.
“The media mob, and the Democrats, they lie,” says Sean Hannity.
“Speaking up for you, and the issues that matter most to the people,” says the announcer.
“They thought there would be a blue wave, not the case,” says Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends, Trump’s favourite morning show, in fact pointing to an electoral truth: that Trump attracted the most votes of any sitting president, staving off a landslide defeat, and that Republicans made gains at state level and in the US House and look likely to retain control of the Senate.
“You’re gonna see something even bigger than Trump in 2022 and 2024,” says Greg Gutfeld, referring to the next two election years.
“The truth does need to come out,” says Ingraham.
“Can we speak freely, again, can we have America back?” asks Carlson.
“We the people deserve better,” says Hannity.
“Fox News,” the announcer says. “America is watching.”
Oh my god, Fox is running a promo of their "opinion" hosts casting doubt on the election results and I guess trying to keep their rabid viewers sated lmao pic.twitter.com/Al1bfzStSZ
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) November 14, 2020
Oliver Darcy, of CNN, wrote that the Fox News video “appears to be part of a bid to hold onto its bleeding audience – an audience that refuses to believe reality, in large part because Fox has primed millions to distrust credible news sources”.
Such conspiracy theories have crossed into Fox’s “straight” news operation since the election was declared for Biden last week. In the four days after the result was called, Media Matters said, Fox News “cast doubt on or pushed conspiracy theories about the election results at least 255 times. A review by Media Matters found 111 such claims on Fox’s ‘straight news’ shows and 144 claims on the network’s opinion shows”.
“Where are the adults at Fox?” Darcy asked. “Why aren’t they getting their talent under control? Well, this ad makes it clear: The executives approve their talent behaving the way they have. In fact, they’re so proud of the undemocratic commentary, they’re happy to showcase it in an ad. They really have no shame.”
Our man David Smith is on White House pool duty today. It remains to be seen if he finds himself off to the golf course again, but given his description of the weather down in Washington, you’d have to think it likely.
He begins:
Greetings from the White House on a crisp and sunny day. POTUS has no public events scheduled.
Numerous people with ‘Trump’ flags and other regalia are in downtown Washington ahead of today’s march.
This is a picture of one such Trump supporter yesterday which is too unusual not to share:
Friday – another new Covid cases record
The US set yet another daily record for new coronavirus cases on Friday, topping 184,000, while Donald Trump promised imminent distribution of a vaccine – except to New York, which he threatened to leave out for political reasons – and President-elect Joe Biden pleaded with Americans to follow basic mitigation measures.
According to Johns Hopkins University, 184,514 new cases were recorded on Friday, up from 153,496 on Thursday. More than 10.7 million cases have been recorded in total and more than 244,000 people have died. Deaths are also increasing: 1,431 were reported on Friday, the highest toll in 1o days if more than a thousand less than the highest such toll, from April.
Here’s more:
Good morning…
…and welcome to another day of politics coverage in the US, a land where the president won’t concede electoral defeat, where state TV is backing him up, but where the president-elect is continuing to prepare for his inauguration regardless. Or if not regardless – there is the small matter of transition funding and national security briefings being held up by the toddler in the White House – then with determined speed. There are 67 days left until Joe Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States of America.
Supporters of Donald Trump are expected to rally in Washington today, under a number of event titles but essentially in support and furtherance of the president’s baseless claim that the election was stolen from him in key battleground states.
(In fact he lost the popular vote to Joe Biden by more than 5m ballots and the electoral college by 306-232, as it happens the same result he said represented a landslide, when it was in his favour against Hillary Clinton.)
According to the Anti-Defamation League, extreme rightwing groups are expected to show up in Washington, for events under titles including “Stop the Steal” and “Million Maga March”.
“Some of these extremists are known for inciting violence,” the ADL said. “Their presence may inspire counter-protesters to show up as opposition.”
On Friday, Trump saluted organisers and said he “may even try to stop by and say hello. This Election was Rigged, from Dominion all the way up & down!
Marchers are expected to start out at the US supreme court. Where they’ll finish remains unclear. We’ll have coverage here.
In the meantime, some further reading:
- Biden plans to reach across the aisle – but is he walking into a Republican trap?
- Laurence H Tribe: Republicans are playing with fire. And we all risk getting burned
- Musa al-Gharbi: White men swung to Biden. Trump made gains with black and Latino voters. Why?
More soon…
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