US election: Trump ‘planning mass rallies’ amid legal action, more White House staff contract COVID
Donald Trump has launched another vitriolic attack on his critics after firing a top White House official and more of his staffers test positive for COVID-19.
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Incumbent President Donald Trump is suggesting the development of a COVID-19 vaccine has been stymied as part of a conspiracy to ensure he lost the 2020 presidential election race.
“As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn’t have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!” Mr Trump tweeted on Monday evening local time.
“If Joe Biden were President, you wouldn’t have the Vaccine for another four years, nor would the @US_FDA have ever approved it so quickly. The bureaucracy would have destroyed millions of lives!” he continued.
“The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later – As I’ve said all along!”
The President’s declaration came hours after pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced their trial vaccine was looking promising, and its stage three trials showed a 90 per cent success rate.
The President also continued to claim a win over key states in last week’s election, despite having no evidence to back up his statements.
“Georgia will be a big presidential win, as it was the night of the Election!” Mr Trump said.
Earlier, the Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, tweeted “Georgia’s election result will include legally cast ballots - and ONLY legally cast ballots. Period,” to which Mr Trump claimed, “This is good news, it means I won!” However even if a recount of Georgia ballots did see the state called for the Republican Party, Mr Trump would still not have enough electoral college votes to win the election.
A number of tweets posted by Mr Trump in recent hours have been flagged with warnings by Twitter.
TRUMP FIRES TOP STAFFER
US President Donald Trump has begun clearing his political enemies from the White House, with the announcement on Twitter he had fired Defence Secretary Mark Esper.
“I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National counter-terrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defence, effective immediately,” the president said in a posting.
“Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” Mr Trump said in a second tweet.
Mr Esper has had an increasingly rocky relationship with the president, who was annoyed by his refusal to roll out active-duty troops to quell protests in Washington and other cities as chaos spread in June.
...Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020
Mr Esper had reportedly prepared a resignation letter in case he was ousted after the election but Mr Trump’s terse tweet was posted to pre-empt any announcement.
There were reports that Mr Trump was eyeing the removal of other irritants, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Mr Trump has criticised for not doing enough to investigate alleged wrongdoing by the Biden family.
It came as a top aide to Mr Trump said the president had no intention of accepting that Joe Biden had won the election and would not “concede”.
“That word is not even in our vocabulary right now,” said Jason Miller on Monday, local time.
He said Team Trump would continue mounting legal challenges and that they believed there would be recounts that could reshape the map, in some cases automatically triggered by margins of less than one per cent, in several states.
Election administrators would be “heading to automatic recounts” in Arizona and Georgia, and the Trump campaign had previously said it would request one in Wisconsin, he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump was reported by Axios to have started discussing with close aides the possibility of a 2024 tilt for the presidency, an indication he may be open to accepting the result that was called on Saturday morning.
In more bad news for the Trump administration, the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a new report in the New York Post.
The one-time GOP presidential candidate and brain surgeon is the latest member of the Trump administration who has tested positive for coronavirus, as reported on Monday morning, local time, according to Politico reporter Katy O’Donnell.
A third wave of cases has broken out in the West Wing with chief of staff Mark Meadows and multiple White House aides testing positive in the days following Election Day.
Trump campaign aide Nick Trainer also has coronavirus.
The outbreak spells more bad news for US President Trump who is vowing to fight the outcome of the presidential election, which was called for Joe Biden on Saturday.
The West Wing has seen dozens of coronavirus infections, including the president, the first lady, their son Barron, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, senior counsellor Hope Hicks and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien.
TRUMP REFUSING TO LET GO, PLANS RALLIES, LEGAL ACTION
Despite a rollcall ranging from his allies to Republican royalty urging Donald Trump to accept he has lost the White House, Mr Trump is planning more extensive legal challenges.
But while establishment Republicans such as former president George W. Bush and Mitt Romney swung behind Joe Biden as 46th president, other senior party figures stood up for Mr Trump’s controversial legal strategy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged patience as the count continued and challenges mounted and Senator Lindsey Graham said Mr Trump should “fight hard”.
“We will work with Biden if he wins, but Trump has not lost,” Mr Graham said.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz said Mr Biden’s victory had been “way premature”.
“I believe President Trump still has a path to victory,” Mr Cruz said.
“And that path is to count every single legal vote that was cast, but also not to (count) any votes that were fraudulently passed or illegally cast, and we have a legal process to determine what’s legal and what isn’t.”
And First Lady Melania Trump weighed in for the first time, knocking down reports that she was urging her husband to step down.
“The American people deserve fair elections,” she tweeted.
“Every legal – not illegal – vote should be counted. We must protect our democracy with complete transparency.”
Her measured words stood in contrast to uncharacteristically divisive comments from her predecessor, with Michelle Obama’s call for unity having almost the opposite effect in parts of America.
“I’m beyond thrilled that my friend @JoeBiden and our first Black and Indian-American woman Vice President, @KamalaHarris, are headed to restore some dignity, competence, and heart at the White House. Our country sorely needs it,” she wrote on Twitter.
But she then criticised the 71 million Americans who supported Mr Trump.
“Let’s remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division,” she said.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do to reach out to these folks in the years ahead and connect with them on what unites us.”
Mr Bush earlier released a statement saying he had called to congratulate President-elect Biden, saying that while Mr Trump had every right to pursue his legal challenges, it was important for the country to “come together”.
“I just talked to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden. I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night,” Mr Bush said.
“Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country. The President-elect reiterated that while he ran as a Democrat, he will govern for all Americans.
“President Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated. The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”
Mr Trump is reportedly planning to start his election-style rallies, where he will reveal obituaries of people who voted in an attempt to bolster his claim of voter fraud.
He spent yesterday morning golfing and issuing more angry tweets about how Democrat election officials were “thieves”.
“The big city machines are corrupt. This was a stolen election. Best pollster in Britain wrote this morning that this clearly was a stolen election, that it’s impossible to imagine that Biden outran Obama in some of these states,” he tweeted.
“We should look at the votes. We’re just beginning the tabulation stage. We should look at these allegations. We’re seeing a number of affidavits that there has been voter fraud. We have a history in this country of election problems.”
He then complained about the US practice of media companies calling elections, which has occurred for decades and was the way that he was declared winner in 2016.
“Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be? We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks!” he tweeted.
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