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Moments in a Trump campaign press conference on Monday afternoon in which White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused Democrats of “congratulating themselves on fraud” and “illegal voting” , Fox News host Neil Cavuto had heard enough.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I just think we need to be very clear. She accuses the other party of congratulating each other on the fraud and welcoming the illegal vote, ”Cavuto said, interrupting the video stream of the briefing, which McEnany said she was leading in a personal capacity rather than in her official role at the White House. “Unless she has more details to back it up, I can’t continue showing you this. I want to make sure they maybe have something to back this up, but it’s an explosive charge to do – let the other side effectively cheat and cheat.
McEnany repeated the claims of other campaign surrogates since the election as to why Trump had not conceded his loss to Joe Biden, who won 290 Electoral College votes to 214 for the president, according to the Associated Press, with three states still too close to call. McEnany alleged that Pennsylvania election officials kept campaign watchers too far away to accurately see the count of the ballots, and attacked the state Supreme Court and the Pennsylvania Secretary of State for bias. alleged against Trump.
With 99% of the votes counted in Pennsylvania, Biden leads Trump with more than 45,000 votes. The PA called the state in Biden on Saturday, giving him the 270 electoral votes needed to be elected president. But Trump refused to concede defeat, and his campaign has launched multiple lawsuits in Pennsylvania and other swing states in hopes of overturning the results there.
Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who spoke after McEnany, alleged multiple irregularities in the state of Michigan, but also declined to provide specific details to reporters.
“Wayne County Republican poll observers were denied their legal right to monitor the election and were deliberately kept in the dark,” McDaniel said. “Election officials blocked windows and padlocked doors.”
“There are thousands of reports of poll observers being intimidated and unable to do their job and as of 4pm this afternoon 131 affidavits were written just in Michigan,” McDaniel said, without explaining their significance. She mentioned a Michigan election official who she said came to work with a Biden t-shirt.
Pressed by reporters to find out if she had proof that fraudulent votes were cast in the election, McEnany said, “Look, what we’re asking for here is patience.”
So far, Senatorial Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have signaled their approval of the Trump campaign’s legal strategy to overturn the election results.
“President Trump has a 100% right to review allegations of improprieties and weigh his legal options,” McConnell told the Senate Monday. “Have no conference on how the president should immediately and cheerfully accept the preliminary election results from the same people who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton conceded the 2016 election to Donald Trump the day after polling day, though she won the popular vote by over 2 million votes, and the Obama administration began to cooperate on a transition, what Trump’s White House refused to do.
McConnell met with Attorney General William Barr on Monday afternoon, and hours later the Associated Press reported that Barr had authorized the Department of Justice to investigate “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Barr allows DOJ to investigate “ substantial allegations ” of voting irregularities despite little evidence of fraud.
– Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) November 9, 2020
With two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia to be decided in the Jan.5 runoff election, McConnell is trying to keep Republicans in the state motivated to vote.
Based on my conversations with Rs over the week, almost everything McConnell does from now on is not about January 20 (opening day and working with Biden) but January 5 (the second round of elections in Georgia). To earn the latter, Rs believes the base needs to be powered up, especially in a rapidly changing state.
– Robert Costa (@costareports) November 9, 2020
Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, whose seats are under threat, released their own statement on Monday calling for the resignation of Georgian Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Raffensperger, a Republican, said he was not resigning.
Not everyone in the GOP intends to allege that the fraud explains the Republican losses in Georgia and across the country. Some, like the re-elected Senator Susan Collins, are content to offer their congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden.
Some other Fox News broadcasters, while not prime-time commentators and morning hosts, were also skeptical of Trump’s claims, although not as blunt as Cavuto. The tweet below shows what is believed to be an internal Fox News feed that has been leaked to the public; the anchor, Sandra Smith, on the left side of the screen was reacting in the studio but apparently not actually on air.
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