From CNN, my emphasis added:
Karl Rove, the architect of former President George W. Bush's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns, acknowledged Wednesday that the 2020 presidential election will not be overturned regardless of the flurry of lawsuits from President Donald Trump challenging the results.
Rove -- who sources said advised the White House and Trump campaign leading up to the 2020 election -- wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that while the President is within his right to challenge the results, his efforts "are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden's column, and certainly they're not enough to change the final outcome."
To prevail, Rove wrote, Trump would need to "prove systemic fraud, with illegal votes in the tens of thousands. There is no evidence of that so far. Unless some emerges quickly, the President's chances in court will decline precipitously when states start certifying results."
"Closing out this election will be a hard but necessary step toward restoring some unity and political equilibrium," he added. "Once his days in court are over, the President should do his part to unite the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go."
The op-ed makes Rove one of the highest profile GOP figures to encourage the President to accept the results of the election.
And from CNBC:
NBC News reported that Trump met with his son-in-law and senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, campaign manager Bill Stepien and senior campaign advisor Jason Miller to discuss a path forward for the Republican incumbent.
Trump held a similar meeting on Tuesday that was more focused on the status of multiple legal challenges his campaign has launched in an attempt to invalidate ballots cast for Biden in six battleground states.
Wednesday’s meeting came as NBC News reported that there is growing expectation among Trump’s advisors that he will never concede that he lost to Biden, even when ballots are certified in coming weeks around the country.
“Do not expect him to concede,” a top aide told NBC. It is more likely, the aide said, that “he’ll say something like, ‘We can’t trust the results, but I’m not contesting them.”
I comment:
If the aide is correct, his parting line will be another ego-driven attack not supported by any evidence, on the foundation of our democracy. Now there’s a legacy!
From CNBC:
Election analysts and legal observers say his chances of winning a recount or of invalidating enough ballots by proving fraud or some other irregularity to deny Biden a victory in even a single state, much less multiple states, are slim at best.
Biden’s legal advisor Bob Bauer has called the Trump campaign’s legal challenges to ballots “theatrics.”
A White House official told NBC News, “It’s not wrong for the Biden team to call it theater.”
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, on Wednesday said it is “very, highly unlikely” that Trump will win enough of the fewer than 45,000 ballots outstanding in Arizona to overcome Biden’s lead there.
Brnovich, whose wife was appointed to the federal judiciary by Trump, also said during a Fox Business interview that his office had not found any evidence of ballot fraud.
In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Fox 5 Atlanta on Tuesday, “We have not found any widespread voter fraud.”
“I understand half of the people will be happy, half of the people will be sad, but I want 100% of the people to understand that the process was fair and accurately counted,” Raffensperger said.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, in a CNN interview Wednesday said that the only known case of voter fraud “in Pennsylvania in this cycle, is a registered Republican in Luzerne County, [who] tried to vote for Trump with his dead mother’s ballot.”
“And at some point, we all have to collectively accept that yelling ‘voter fraud’ when there is no evidence whatsoever of it is yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” Fetterman said. “It is harming the democratic franchise of our country and the peaceful transition of power, and we cannot accept that.”
In Michigan, state Attorney General Dana Nessel also disputed claims of fraud by the Trump campaign.
“The November elections in Michigan ran as smoothly as ever,” Nessel, a Democrat, said Wednesday.
“Irregularities occur in every election, but there are multiple layers of protection to ensure that these irregularities are caught and rectified.”
“Most of these are simple human error, not crimes,” she said.
I comment:
Can everyone in this modest forum now do our country the courtesy of referring to Biden as “President-Elect”?