By Denny Gulino
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – It’s all over but the legal challenges, recounts and other hurdles that an angry President Trump will try to put in the way of former Vice President Joe Biden, acclaimed by networks and news services Saturday to be the next president of the United States.
The tide turned shortly after 11 a.m. when CNN and other networks saw Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania widen by another increment, making a Trump catch-up virtually impossible. Soon The Associated Press and The New York Times chimed in and about 40 minutes later, even the Fox News decision desk made the same call.
Biden issued a statement from Wilmington saying in part, ““With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us,” He is expected to address the nation in the evening.
Kamala Harris, the first woman to become vice-president elect, tweeeted, “We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started.”
The slew of projections, that the Biden camp had hoped would have arrived Friday, came as President Trump was on the golf course in beautiful weather, having earlier tweeted, “I won this election, by a lot!.”
Four of his morning tweets repeating accusations of voting count fraud had been blocked by Twitter, replaced by its warning tag that the information was in dispute. Another retweet of portions of his contentious White House statement from earlier in the week was also subsequently blocked.
Biden passed the winning 270 mark of presumed Electoral College votes by different margins, depending on who was doing the counting. Fox News, which had earlier given him Arizona and Nevada votes, said he had reached 290. CNN, which held back on Arizona, gave him 273. If current trends persist, however, he may reach 306, the same number Trump won in 2016.
A large happy crowd of Biden supporters gathered in front of the temporary fence erected around the White House compound, a fence festooned with anti-Trump posters, drawings and other campaign art work, including an “Eviction Notice.” The North front gathering continued to swell, stretching for blocks in the early afternoon and was accompanied by other jubilant crowds in other directions surrounding the Executive Mansion.
New York City, Atlanta and Philadelphia saw their own celebratory crowds as did many other cities Saturday afternoon.
The Biden camp set his address to the nation for 8p ET Saturday night, an event to be accompanied by fireworks yet still conducted in the typical Biden precautionary mode of social distancing and masks with onlookers in their autos, in sharp contrast to the long series of MAGA rally campaign gatherings.
Messages of congratulations to Biden included from some prominent Republicans like Jeb Bush and John Kasich and even from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has considered himself a Trump ally.
The barriers the Trump legal team will attempt to erect in Biden’s way have already begun and will intensify Monday. Initially concentrating on Pennsylvania and Michigan, the lawsuits are expected to extend to other states where Biden has narrow winning margins.
Recounts are automatically assured in some states with extremely thin Biden leads like Georgia, and are expected to be requested by the Trump team in several other states.
Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub has earlier told CNN that despite the accusations of voting and vote-count irregularities, “There was no evidence of fraud.” For a race with record voter turnout for both candidates despite a pandemic, the trouble-free execution “was really kind of amazing.”
In his on-camera appearance late Friday night, Biden urged calm, saying his opponents are not enemies. He said that he and his running mate had already attended a briefing on the virus, which is spreading more widely than ever and costing more than a thousand lives a day most days of the week.
Later Friday night the White House confirmed news reports that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, a mask skeptic, had contracted the virus. One news service reported two of his aides were also infected.
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Contact this reporter: denny@macenews.com.
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