Ritu Jha-
It is no surprise hearing from President Donald Trump spreading the misinformation without a slip of the tongue. It is a well-known fact that he will do anything to distract public attention and opinions towards himself.
On Wednesday morning, just as counting were underway, Trump delivered a speech in the White House, and just as expected he was dishing out one fake information after the other.
In fact, he already claimed victory over his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, election while the counting of the votes was still incomplete. In reality, at that time the Republicans were trailing behind the Democrats. Over that, he said that he will be going to the Supreme Court to stop “voting” alleging there was fraud.
“This is a fraud on the American public, this is an embarrassment to our country,” he told supporters at the White House on Wednesday delivering a muddled message.
“We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any balance at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
Trump probably was referring to the ongoing process of counting votes, rather than “voting” because polling ended on Tuesday night.
“As far as I am concerned, we already have won,” he said.
In response to an earlier Trump tweet about a “big win”, his Democratic rival Joe Biden tweeted: “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare the winner of this election. It’s the voters’ place.”
Even an adviser to Trump, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, criticized the President’s statement saying: “It’s a bad strategic decision. It’s a bad political decision.”
This kind of talk comes only when there is certain level of fear of losing the battle sets in.
“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump boldly claimed.
It was not clear who the target of his accusation was as officials were still in the process of counting votes in most states, even though the media had declared winners in some based on the number of votes tallied compared to those still pending.
Earlier, Biden virtually declared victory, claiming: “We’re gonna win this.”
He told supporters: “I’m here to tell you tonight we believe we’re on track to win this election. I’m optimistic about this outcome…. It ain’t over until every vote is counted, until every ballot is counted.”
Meanwhile, Trump said: “Millions and millions of people voted for us (but) a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.”
He claimed that he had won in North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania even though the counting was still taking place. However, he did win two of the most important states, Florida and Texas. The win in Texas was by a very close shave and in Florida, Republicans pretty comfortably.
By 3 am, NBC and CBS projected Biden winning 220 electoral college votes to Trump’s 213, while the counting was still going on. To win, 270 votes are needed.
The US presidential election system is based on an electoral college made up of state representatives depending on the state’s populations and not on popular votes.
Because of this Trump wrested the presidency away from Hillary Clinton in 2016 even though he polled 2.87 million fewer votes than her.
While Trump might be claiming about a ‘big win’ out loud, he is clearly a little wary about the actual results. That could be one key reasons, why he has been complaining about the postal votes that he alleged were subject to fraud and has wanted the votes received by election officials after the close of polling to be rejected.
The Supreme Court did not make a ruling on the Republican case against a Pennsylvania court permitting the counting of postal votes received three days after the close of polling. Trump is now expected to appeal to the Supreme Court to stop the counting of the postal votes.
In an election process disrupted by the raging Covid-19 pandemic, already an estimated 97.6 million of about 152 million registered voters had cast their ballots by Sunday, 62.1 million by post and 35.5 million at in-person early voting polling sites, according to the US Elections Project.
Meanwhile, on the presidential result, both Democrat and Republican supporters are adamant about their presidential candidate.
Amar Shergill, the first South Asian American to lead the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party told indica News, “Those of us following the polls closely were always aware that this election was going to come down to a few swing states and that is exactly where we are tonight. Given the number of votes outstanding and the location, Biden is in a position to win the White House later this week. However, whatever happens, we must count every last vote if we are going to call ourselves a democracy.”
Ajay Bhutoria, a California-based Democratic supporter said, “By this afternoon we believe Biden will have a lead that puts him over 270 electoral votes. And Biden will garner more votes than any candidate in history – more than 69 million and over 50 percent.
Last night Democrat flipped Arizona and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, and expect to win Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Georgia is currently a toss-up and North Carolina is a tight race.
“We are on track to win Michigan by more than Donald Trump did in 2016, win Wisconsin by more than Trump did in 2016, win Pennsylvania by more than Trump did in 2016, ” Bhutoria noted with confidence.
He said that Trump, President of the United States falsely claimed he had won this race, and then demanded that votes stop being counted. “If Trump got his wish and we stopped counting ballots right now Joe Biden would be the next President of the United States, ” he said. “The American people get to pick their president — the President doesn’t get to pick the people whose votes get counted. Joe Biden will fight for every vote to be counted. There won’t all be Biden votes but Biden believes all outstanding votes should be counted.”
Bhutoria told indica News, “We need to wait and as Biden said, keep the faith till every ballot is counted. I am very confident Biden-Harris will win and unite the country! This will be a close election but we will win!”
However, Democrats have a lot of work to do to build their relationship with working families. This election should not be this close. Democrats need to support popular policies like Medicare For All, The Green New Deal, and College For All.”
K V Kumar, a veteran Republican and have raised $200,000 personally for President Trump says “I am 1000 percent sure, he would win.”
So do another Republican veteran Dr. Sampath Shivangi of Mississippi, he told indica News, “In 200 years of US history a candidate who has won Ohio has won the Presidency 90% times. Not only President Trump has won Ohio has won Florida and Texas. He will hit the jackpot in next few hours. It will be an amazing story in US Presidential elections.”
Texas-based Badri Singh, co-founder US Impact told indica News he is hopeful Trump would win because numbers are yet to come in. Badri sounding still confident told that Arizona has 500,000 votes to count and are mostly pro-Trump, and there are 11 Electoral College votes. Wisconsin will go on the recount, as the president has the power to request for recounting. Trump has announced on Twitter Michigan lawsuit to halt on vote counting.
“Georgia has 16 Electoral college votes and Alaska with three and these are rural locations and in rural belt, Trump does well,” said Singh.
