Questions abound as Trump waits for the end of his presidency | Voice of America

WASHINGTON – Less than seven weeks before the end of his four-year term, questions swirl around U.S. President Donald Trump.

Will he award his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden?

Trump has yet to offer a concession so far and none are required. A concession is simply a polite US presidential election tradition in which the losing candidate admits the obvious and congratulates the winner.

Trump, however, shows no unequivocal sign of recognition that he lost the election, even as state officials after the contested state say Biden has won the main political battlegrounds that will lead to his investiture on January 20 as the country’s 46th president.

Instead, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the election was fraudulent and that he was swindled from a second term. On Wednesday he posted a 46-minute video filled with debunked lies claiming voting and vote count irregularities and trying to prove he actually won.

“It was a huge dump of votes, mostly Biden, almost all of Biden. And to this day, everyone is trying to find out where it came from? Trump asserted. “But I went from a lot [in the hours after the polls closed] to lose a little ”in the days that followed.

Trump’s waning lead is easily explained by the fact that the huge advance mail-in votes, which he criticized, mainly skewed in favor of Biden and took several days to go – sometimes because officials of the State have banned the counting of early votes until election day or after the close of polling stations.

Trump and his campaign have made no legal progress to prove their case in the political battlefield states that have turned in Biden’s favor. In the latest setback, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday refused to hear his lawsuit directly in an attempt to overturn his loss of 20,000 votes, saying the case must first go to lower courts.

US presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College, with the most populous states having the most votes. Biden holds an unofficial advantage of 306-232, the exact total won by Trump in 2016, which he said was a “landslide” victory over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton. Biden also leads the popular vote with nearly 7 million votes.

The electoral college vote is scheduled for December 14, and Biden is expected to be declared the winner. Congress will certify the Electoral College’s results in early January, two weeks before Biden is sworn in on a platform currently under construction on the Western Front of the U.S. Capitol.

A question also remains about the inauguration: will Trump attend?

For more than a century, every outgoing president has adhered to the custom and attended his successor’s swearing-in ceremony, even when the outgoing president lost to the new American leader.

Trump said he made his decision but did not announce where he planned to be on inauguration day. But he’s considering another White House run in 2024.

Only one US president – Grover Cleveland in 1892 – successfully resumed another term in the White House after losing a candidacy for reelection four years earlier.

Trump is keeping his options open and hinting at his plans.

He told Republicans at a White House holiday party this week: “Four years have been amazing. We are trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.