AS a result from President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede to President-elect Joe Biden’s administration and instead pressed about unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, stalling the government’s normal process of preparing for a new presidential administration.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Trump’s supporters, referred to as the ‘Million MAGA March’, poured into the nation’s capital to echo his false claims of election fraud.
His campaign has filed lawsuits seeking to overturn the results in multiple states, though without success, and legal experts say the litigation stands little chance of altering the outcome of the Nov 3 election.
“Hundreds of thousands of people showing their support in D.C. They will not stand for a Rigged and Corrupt Election!” the president wrote on Twitter, though most crowd estimates were well short of Trump’s figure.
Election officials of both parties have said there is no evidence of major irregularities.
Biden has won 306 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College system that determines the presidential winner, according to Edison Research, far more than the 270 needed to secure a majority.
Trump earned the same number of electoral votes in 2016 over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, a victory he has called a “landslide” despite the fact that she won the national popular vote. Biden has also won the popular vote: with a few states still counting ballots, he leads Trump by more than 5.5 million votes, or 3.6%.
With his chances of reversing the outcome virtually extinguished, Trump has discussed with advisers potential media ventures that would keep him in the spotlight ahead of a possible 2024 White House bid, aides said.
But his public claims of a “rigged” election have prevented Biden and his team from gaining access to government office space and funding normally afforded to an incoming administration to ensure a smooth transition.
Currently, the federal agency in charge of providing those resources, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognise Biden’s victory.
States are in the process of certifying their election results. The Electoral College meets to vote for the new president on Dec 14.
Meanwhile, Biden has spent days huddled with advisers as he weighs whom to appoint to his cabinet, fields congratulatory calls from world leaders and maps out the policies he will pursue after being sworn in on Jan 20. He is expected to continue meeting with advisers in private on Sunday. – Nov 15, 2020
