It would be a miracle now, many of them actually, but President Trump is not ready to throw in the towel. In public at least, he is still full of fighting.
“This election was stolen,” he says. “It was a rigorous election, 100 percent, and everyone knows it.”
“It’s going to happen that I got about 74 million votes, and I lost?” he adds. “It’s not possible.”
It was around 6pm on Friday evening and I reached out to the President after my afternoon update on Operation War Speed, the successful race to produce the coronovirus vaccine. The Rose Garden presentation was smooth and effective, yet he felt that there would never be a loan to advance the government and industry.
“Six months to produce a vaccine,” he said. “Joe Biden couldn’t do it but you don’t get any credit.”
Leaving his silent Veterans Day appearance at Arlington National Ceremony, the vaccine was the first on camera since the updated election, an absence that seemed like a lifetime given its ubiquity for four years. He did not raise any questions and gave no interviews.
Earlier on Friday, he spoke to Geraldo Rivera of Fox News, a longtime friend, Rivara, who said on Twitter that the president acknowledged the victory was a “long shot” and that he would eventually “do the right thing”.
I got the same sense as the president’s mood, even opposing him to say anything definite. In our 10-minute phone interview, he talked evenly, showing no anger or even agitation. There was a fact in this case that suggested an understanding of the inevitable.
In different ways, I asked if he would accept the result if his court challenge fails.
“We’ll see how it changes,” he said at one point.
When I asked if he could come to terms with the defeat, he replied that “when they will not follow the counting of votes to keep an eye on their voters, it is hard to come to terms.”
For the third time, he said, “Then, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen.”
They actually feel that the victory was stolen and repeatedly pointed to Dominion voting systems, a technique used by most states, including Michigan and Georgia.
“It was rejected by the state of Texas because it is unsafe,” Trump said. He also reiterated that some private company owners and investors have connections with Democrats, and it is true that the firm contributed to and worked with the Clinton Family Foundation during the Obama-Biden administration.
The Associated Press confirms that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s former top aide is one of the company’s lobbyists. The AP said the firm also employs a lobbyist working for Republicans Dick Cheney and John Boehner.
Those bipartisan connections are not positive in Trump World. Instead, they portray Dominion as a creature of the swamp that Trump came to Washington to drain.
Although Biden gained a decisive edge at Electoral College and a history-making 78 million popular votes, he could not fully reconcile his standing with the Trump campaign and the successful performance of the GOP.
He cited the overwhelming, enthusiastic crowd at his rallies as evidence. “A small rally was 25,000 people and Biden had a small crowd, no one came,” he said. “I was not losing those states.”
He also notes that the GOP ostensibly held the Senate, which relies on two Georgia runaways, and is probably picking up 12 seats in the House and trampling state legislatures.
“We’re doing great,” he said.
My hunch is that, when there is no scope for appeal, the president will accept defeat by accepting his claims of fraud. Whether he will do so in a speech or a statement or just a tweet is part of the play that he excels in making.
Soon, however, the custom should invite Biden to the White House for a photo op and order his team to cooperate with the incoming administration. Barack Obama bit his lips and did with Trump in 2016, and Trump should politely pass the baton.
It would not be pleasant, but the president would be doing himself no favors for himself, his supporters and his future if they let the displeasure rule over his last actions as president. The election is supposed to give the country the necessary relief from the hostility of the campaign.
Of course, when Trump was elected, that relief was less than a blink of an eye. Many of his complaints against Democrats, Big Media and Big Tech are legitimate and should reflect the fair history that his vast policy breakthroughs came despite unfair and un-American attacks on his legitimacy.
In that regard, he sees the election results as just the culmination of a struggle against him, which began in 2016 with the Obama-Biden administration’s FBI and CIA corruption, and elected Hillary Clinton to hold elections in 2016 Was. That effort gave birth to Russia, Russia, the Russia narrative that did not appear as a complete lie until the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller ended in 2019.
“It’s amazing but nothing happened [Jim] Com and [Andrew] McCabe, even though they were caught cold, ”he said of the abusive former FBI leaders.
“So this, the biggest theft in America’s history. And everybody knows it.”
He complained about the elections he had lost on the battlefields by a large margin, calling them “suppression surveys” because he discouraged donors as well as voters.
“These were not accidents or bad polluters,” Trump said. “These are corrupt institutions,” and they excluded ABC and The Washington Post.
He also did not mention partisan impeachment, making him only the third president to face such slander. At the time it was the most outrageous act of all, but in the end it was part of a malleable pattern of dirty tricks.
Almost later, Trump ignored most of the media’s methods, posting exclusive posts on the e-mail banging on Hunter Biden’s laptop that implicated Joe Biden in his son’s business plans.
“He did not report all the crimes of the Biden family,” Trump said. “If I did that. . . “
Assessing the full impact of his presidency would be the job of future historians, but there is no doubt that Trump, Warts and all, was a resounding success in fulfilling the original purpose of his election.
He brought a much-needed curriculum reform to Washington and reminded the Republican Party. His economic populist GOP is turning into a working, multi-party party, working-class crew, and America Firsters, while forcing the Dems to choose between the remnants of radical Far Left and traditional liberals.
Whatever the president decides about his personal future, it remains Trumpism. This alone is conclusive evidence that Donald Trump was a highly consequential president whose policies improved the lives of millions and millions of Americans.
.