NEW DELHI, Nov 15: For the first time, the United States president Donald Trump on Sunday seemed to be publicly acknowledging that his Democrat rival Joe Biden “won” the Presidential elections but accepted it with a rider, “he won because the election was rigged,” reiterating his claims of widespread voting fraud.
Biden defeated Trump by winning a series of battleground states that the Republican incumbent had won in 2016. The Democratic former vice president also won the national popular vote by more than 5.5 million votes, or 3.6 percentage points.
In a series of Twitter posts, Trump said “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!” trump tweeted and pledged to go forward with a legal strategy that he hoped would overturn state results that gave Biden the win.
The Trump administration’s decision not to recognize Biden as the winner has prevented Biden and his team from gaining access to government office space and to funding normally afforded to an incoming administration to ensure a smooth transition. The federal agency in charge of providing those resources, the General Services Administration, has yet to recognize Biden’s victory.
In a speech in Delaware, Biden said his team was going full steam ahead with forming a new administration to take over on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021, “come what may.”
“We’re going to be going, moving along, in a consistent manner, putting together our administration, the White House, and reviewing who we’re going to pick for the Cabinet positions, and nothing’s going to stop that,” he said on Tuesday. The President-elect said it was an “embarrassment” that Trump has not conceded the election.
(Manas Dasgupta)
