President Trump and Joe Biden Address the Nation Late Last Night as Votes are Still Being Counted

By Yehudit Garmaise

  As both presidential candidates inch toward the golden number of 270 electoral college votes and with tens of thousands of absentee ballots still to be counted in four key battleground states: Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, last night at midnight at the White House, President Donald Trump addressed the nation after former Vice-President Joe Biden did the same hours before from Wilmington, Del.

      “This is, without question, the latest news conference I have had,” said President Trump, as he stood in front of three rows that comprised 50 American flags, perhaps referencing the 50 states in the country.

   “I want to thank the American people for their tremendous support,” said the president, as a crowd cheered and recorded his speech on their phones. “Millions and millions people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.

   “And we won’t stand for it. We will not stand for it,” the president said to many cheers.

 President Trump then graciously thanked his wife, Melania Trump, who was standing by his side, “I want to thank the First Lady, my entire family, and Vice President Pence and Mrs. Pence for being with us all through this.”

  “We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden, it was just called off,” referring to a move by Biden’s campaign to take some of the counting to court, a move that Trump said that he predicted long ago: this if Biden’s campaign wasn’t winning, he would take Trump to court, which the president described as “a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”

   The president then said that his “goal now is to ensure, for the good of the nation: the integrity of our nation.”

  “This is a major fraud on our nation,” the president said. “We want the law to be used in a proper manner.”

   President Trump then announced his team’s plan to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  “We want all voting to stop,” he said. “We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4am, and add them to the list, OK?”

  “We will win this, and as far as I am concerned, we already have won it.”

   Vice President Mike Pence agreed, when he spoke, saying, “We are on the road to victory, and we will make America great again.”

   Several hours before Democratic Challenger Joe Biden addressed a crowd at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del.

   Biden told the crowd that “your patience is commendable,” and “we feel good about where we are. We really do. I am here to tell you tonight that we are on track to win this election.”

   Biden told the crowd that the unprecedented number of mail-in votes would delay the counting of the ballots. 

   “We are going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes in finished. 

  And it ain’t over until every vote is counted.”

   Biden noted that he flipped Arizona, which hadn’t gone Democratic since 1996, and won Minnesota and he said was “feeling real good about Wisconsin and Michigan,” although Trump is leading those states and won them in 2016. Biden also claimed that he would win Pennsylvania, although “it would take time to count the votes.”

   All eyes now are on Pennsylvania, which is Biden’s home state and where he focused a lot of his campaign energy, but the state is one that  Trump that told a cheering crowd last night that he was leading by 690,000 votes: “a tremendous amount.”

     But Biden did say, “It is not up to me or up to President Trump to declare victory. That is up to the American people.”  

       Trump sounded confident and upbeat, as he said, “The results tonight have been phenomenal, and we were getting ready to get outside and celebrate something that was so beautiful, so good. Such a vote, such a success.

   “The citizens of this country have come out in record numbers…to support our incredible movement.”

Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President