President Donald Trump took questions from reporters for the first time in three weeks at a Thanksgiving press conference in which he continued his untrue claims that there was “massive” voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Questioned about whether he would leave office if the President-elect Joe Biden gets the official certification of votes from the Electoral College, Trump had plenty to say, including, “Certainly I will, and you know that. I will, and you know that.”
At one point, the Thanksgiving press conference — which began as the traditional president’s call to thank U.S. military members for their service and wish them well — got contentious as a reporter pressed him to clarify his comments in which he claimed that if Biden is certified, the Electoral college “made a mistake ’cause this election was a fraud.”
“You’re going to see things happening over the next week or two that are going to be shocking to people,” Trump replied. “If you look at the numbers in Michigan, if you look at the numbers in Pennsylvania, if you look at fraudulent voting and fraudulent votes, so I can’t say what’s first and what’s last in terms of is this the last one or is this the first one of a second term. We’ll see what happens. Nobody wants to see the kind of fraud that this election has really come to represent.”
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Trump and his legal team have continued to lose one courtroom battle after another. Legal losses and the certification of Michigan’s election prompted the General Services Administration to finally start the process of ascertainment, which provides funds and access to important federal documents to the incoming presidential administration.
The president also said that he will travel to Georgia to support the Senate run-off races of Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are in high-profile challenges against Democrats Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
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“I’m going on Saturday night, I’ll be in Georgia, we’re going to have a tremendous crowd,” Trump told reporters. “They’re looking for the right site. We’d love to take one of the big stadiums, but you can’t because of the COVID.”
Biden won Georgia by 12,670 votes. The state certified the election after a hand recount. The margin of error is small enough that the Trump campaign was entitled to another recount, which they asked for. It will be paid for by taxpayers.
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“”This was a massive fraud,” the president asserted. “This should never take place in this country. We’re like a third-world country. We have machines that nobody knows what the hell they’re looking at. You take a look at all the mistakes they made. Look at even Georgia. Look at all the mistakes they made, and all that was is a simple you press a button. Look at Georgia. All the votes they found just by going … And I said they shouldn’t even do it because it doesn’t mean anything. They’re doing a recount right now in Georgia that is meaningless.”
Trump was also asked if he would continue the tradition of attending the new president’s inauguration.
“I don’t want to say that yet, I mean I know the answer, I know the answer,” Trump told reporters. “I’ll be honest, I know the answer, I just don’t want to say it yet.”
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