Simon Ateba covers the White House, the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions for Today News Africa in Washington D.C. Simon can be reached on simonateba@todaynewsafrica.com
Defeated U.S. President, Donald Trump, on Sunday, acknowledged for the first time that President-elect Joe Biden won the November 3, 2020 presidential election, baselessly adding that he won only because of rigging.
President Trump’s election fraud claims are baseless and his refusal to concede defeat is inconsequential, as he will still leave office at noon on January 20, 2021, whether he concedes defeat or not, whether he cooperates with Joe Biden or not, and whether his supporters protest in Washington D.C. or not. It’s all over and the outgoing President and his government officials know it.
Mr. Trump’s claims are so false that on November 13, a broad coalition of top government and industry officials said in a statement that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”
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The statement on Thursday night by Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was a direct repudiation of President Trump’s efforts to spread false claims and undermine the integrity of an election he lost to Joe Biden.
The officials, some of them appointed by President Trump himself, said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was “the most secure in American history.”
In the courts, President Trump is also suffering huge losses, only because there is no evidence of massive fraud, two weeks after the election was successfully conducted.
On Friday alone, nine cases meant to attack President-elect Joe Biden’s win in key battleground states were denied or dropped.
Trump’s lawyers have failed to provide any evidence showing there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and state election leaders have overwhelmingly said it did not happen.
None of President Trump’s court case is strong enough to overturn any election result, at a time when he would need to overturn results in several states he lost.
President-elect Joe Biden received 306 electoral votes while Trump got 232 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump received exactly 306 electoral votes and Hillary Clinton got 232 electoral votes. Back then, Trump called it a landslide, although he lost the popular vote by 3 million.
This time, he lost both the electoral vote and the popular vote by nearly 6 million to Biden.
In the battleground state of Georgia where a hand recount is going on, Trump is behind by more than 14,000 votes, and if history is any indication, recounts often move votes by just a few hundreds.
In the end, President Trump has lost in the ballot, and he’s losing in the court. He has zero path to victory and will have no choice but to bow out when his time is up on January 20, 2021.
Trump can still exit the White House gracefully by using the time he has left to help pass and sign a coronavirus relief bill as cases continue to climb. More than 11 million Americans have now contracted the virus and experts continue to warn that as new cases are recorded hospitalizations and deaths will follow.
It will be in the interest of the United States for Trump to also cooperate with the Biden team to allow a smooth transfer of power. Failure to do that will affect the current President when he leaves office and returns to Florida on January 20, 2021.
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