President Donald Trump gave a 15 minute press briefing at the White House on Thursday evening, in which he calmly but forcefully denounced the extensive vote fraud underway to steal the election, and promised that it would be fought out in the courts to make sure that “all the legal votes are counted” — but only the legal votes. “If you count the legal votes, I easily won,” he said, “despite election interference from big media, big money and big tech.”
Trump slammed Wall Street’s direct role, as he has in the past: “At the national level, our opponent’s major donors were Wall Street bankers and special interests.” Trump said that “Republicans have become the party of the American worker.” He then went on to cite extensively the kinds of fraud being perpetrated in state after state, in order to “whittle down our vote,” in a process that is “unprecedented in American history.” Trump promised to take the fight to the courts, and said it could “end up perhaps at the highest court in the land.”
As Trump was speaking, the state of the vote count in the decisive states was as follows:
With Pennsylvania (20), Georgia (16), Nevada (6) and Arizona (11) “in play,” Biden is credited with 253 and Trump 232 electoral votes. (This doesn’t take into account ongoing and future legal challenges. Trump needs 38 of those 53 electoral votes, meaning Pennsylvania and Georgia, plus either Nevada or Arizona.
NEVADA — As of Thursday evening, 9 p.m., Nevada has made almost no progress in its vote count, moving from 74.76% to 76.72% of votes counted. Trump is 11,438 votes behind, with around 370,000 more votes to be counted. Clark County (Reno) is where the massive bulk of Biden votes originate. (Trump won 14 of the 16 Nevada counties.) A former Nevada Attorney General, and now a co-chair for Trump, is handling legal suits over the problematic Clark County, involving ballots counted from deceased people and from people who don’t live in the county.
ARIZONA — As of 9 p.m., Trump has closed to 46,257 votes away, with about 220,000 votes yet to count — gaining 22,000 votes this evening, or about 32,000 of the 42,000 counted (or 76% rate). At that rate, he will win Arizona. AP had given Arizona to Biden in the early hours of Wednesday, with over a half million votes to be counted — as desperation haunted the media at that point. A 61% rate from this point on puts Trump ahead.
GEORGIA — Trump leads by 2,497 with as many as 17,500 votes still to be counted. Biden is hoping that Chatham County (Savannah, GA), the “Clark County” of Georgia, will pull him ahead. It is a heavily Democratic county with suspicious vote counting, and they are holding out their mail-ins until the end. Whatever happens in GA, it will be below 0.5%, the legal threshold for a recount.
PENNSYLVANIA — As of 9:30 pm, Trump is still ahead by 48,751 votes. There are as many as 225,000 more mail-ins to count. The Pennsylvania Appeals Court apparently changed the dynamic around noon Thursday. Throughout Wednesday’s processing of mail-ins, the Trump monitors were not allowed anywhere near the activity — and Biden was scoring a very regular 78% of the mail-ins. Everyone knew that he needed to hit around 72% to surpass Trump. The Appeals Court, belatedly, overruled a lower court, and observers now can “be permitted to observe all aspects of the canvassing process within 6 feet.” Almost immediately, and all Thursday afternoon, the Biden rate dropped to 68%. If that had been done Wednesday, Pennsylvania could have been called in the Trump camp. As it is, all Biden needs at this point, if there are truly 225,000 more real mail-ins, is to garner 61%. Regardless, this state is going to recount and to court.
MICHIGAN — Besides the two Biden ‘vote surges’ of Wednesday, 5 - 6:00 a.m. and 1:30 - 2:00 p.m., a third one occurred overnight; so, on Thursday morning, a Trump lead of 5.47% swung to a Biden lead of 2.73%. Otherwise, vote counts proceeded incrementally. Overall, Trump’s 13% lead completely disappeared over Wednesday night. An unknown amount of defective mail-in votes were never properly examined, amongst the over 3.2 million mail-ins — about 33% more than the in-person votes.
NORTH CAROLINA — Trump leads by 76,701 votes, or 1.41%. There are 116,200 absentees that were requested but still not counted. It is very unlikely that all were actually turned in to be counted — and even if they were, it is also very unlikely that it could change matters. North Carolina indicates it will be days before they make the vote official. Of note, nothing has changed here since Wednesday morning, and their 15 electoral votes should have been in Trump’s count quite a while ago.
