President Donald Trump’s political future has been the subject of endless speculation since key major media outlets last week began calling this year’s historic election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
As late as Monday morning, Trump’s reelection campaign continued to make baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and misconduct, including in Georgia. However, the campaign is dropping a central part of its lawsuit seeking to stop the certification of the election results in Pennsylvania, where Biden defeated Trump to capture the state and help win the White House.
Ahead of a Tuesday hearing in the case, Trump’s campaign dropped the allegation that more than 682,000 of mail-in and absentee ballots were illegally processed without its representatives watching, according to The Associated Press.
The campaign’s slimmed-down lawsuit, filed in federal court Sunday, seeks to block Pennsylvania from certifying a victory for Biden in the state, and it maintains its claim Democratic voters were treated more favorably than Republican voters.
The Associated Press on Nov. 7 called the presidential contest for Biden after determining the remaining ballots left to be counted in Pennsylvania would not allow Trump to catch up. Trump has refused to concede.
Axios and The Washington Post have reported recently Trump is telling those close to him he plans to run again in 2024. Last week, Trump endorsed Ronna McDaniel for another term as chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.
On Sunday, Trump worked to take back an apparent acknowledgment Biden won the White House.
Trump’s earlier comments Sunday had given some critics and supporters hope the White House was ready to begin working on a transition with Biden’s team. Trump, without using Biden’s name, said “He won” as part of a tweet that made claims about a “rigged” election but then reversed course.
Election officials from both political parties stated publicly the election went well, and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities. Trump’s campaign has tried to mount legal challenges across the country.
The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency that oversees U.S. election security, said last week the “November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” The agency said, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Biden defeated Trump by winning back a trio of battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and topped the 270 electoral vote threshold to clinch the presidency. Biden so far has 78.8 million votes, the most by a winning candidate, to Trump’s 73.1 million.
“If the president’s prepared to begin to recognize that reality, that’s positive,” Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Still, Klain said, “Donald Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden president or not president. The American people did that.”
A Republican governor, Arkansas' Asa Hutchinson, said “it was good, actually” to see Trump’s tweet that Biden won. “I think that’s the start of an acknowledgment ... We want to make sure that there is a smooth transition,” Hutchinson said on NBC.
Nearly two weeks after Election Day, Trump has neither called Biden nor made a formal concession.
Former President Barack Obama, in an interview conducted and aired Sunday on CBS' “60 Minutes,” said he would remind Trump that, as president, he is a public servant and a temporary occupant of the office.
“And when your time is up, then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego, and your own interests, and your own disappointments,” Obama said. “My advice to President Trump is, if you want at this late stage in the game to be remembered as somebody who put country first, it’s time for you to do the same thing.”
In comments Friday in the Rose Garden about a coronavirus vaccine, Trump said his administration would “not be going to a lockdown” to slow the spread of COVID-19 and added that “whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell.”
