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- President Donald Trump is unlikely to formally concede defeat to President-elect Joe Biden in the presidential election, sources close to Trump have told media outlets.
- CNN’s White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, said that her sources had told her that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a trusted adviser, had raised the concession question with the president.
- The president is continuing to cling to baseless allegations that the election was stolen as a result of vast mail-in ballot fraud and a series of lawsuits experts believe are doomed to fail.
- Some aides have reportedly tried to get Trump to accept defeat, as a series of news outlets followed Business Insider’s lead Saturday and projected that Biden had won the key state of Pennsylvania.
- Defeated candidates traditionally use their concession speech to congratulate the victor and appeal for unity, but the process is not necessary under the Constitution for power to be transferred to the winner.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump is unlikely to formally concede defeat to President-elect Joe Biden and accept that he lost the presidential election, sources close to the president told media outlets Saturday.
On Saturday, a series of news networks, following Business insider’s lead, projected that Biden was set to win Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes, placing victory beyond Trump’s reach, and declared the Democrat the winner of the presidential election.
Trump has not spoken publicly since early Friday, when he repeated the baseless allegation that the election was being rigged. He left the White House on Saturday to play golf, and in a flurry of cap-locked tweets, some labeled misleading by the social media platform, refused to accept the result.
In a statement released by his campaign, Trump said Biden was “falsely posing” as winner.
Trump is reportedly pinning his hopes on a series of lawsuits his campaign has launched challenging the results in swing states, which experts say are likely to fail because of a lack of evidence.
Some at the White House are reportedly trying to get the president to accept his defeat.
On Saturday night, CNN’s White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, tweeted that she had been told by two sources that Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a trusted adviser, had approached the president about conceding.
—Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 8, 2020
Sources close to the president have told media outlets that the president is unlikely to call Biden and concede defeat in the traditional manner.
Allies of the president told The Washington Post that he is unlikely to concede defeat “under any circumstances in the traditional manner of a concession speech and a phone call to Biden.”
Advisors to the president backed the assessment in comments to The New York Times, saying that Trump “has refused to acknowledge that he has lost” and is standing by his groundless electoral fraud claims.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions from Business Insider about whether Trump was likely to concede that he has lost.
Conceding defeat is a norm rather than a process formally enshrined in the US constitution, with losing candidates customarily using concession speeches to offer their congratulations to the winner and call for post-election unity. Trump has long refused to countenance the prospect of defeat, with many people close to the president has long said that securing victory at any cost is his core motivation. Ahead of the election, he had controversially refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
The Constitution stipulates that whoever wins the contest will take power at noon on January 20 after the election, following a transition period during which they prepare for office and appoint top officials, regardless of the incumbent’s opinion about the results.
Several advisors told the Times that they thought it unlikely that Trump would try to block Biden from taking over the office.
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