Desperate Trump insists election is ‘not over’ as electoral college prepares to seal Biden victory on Monday

Donald Trump is not abandoning his hopes that he can remain president, even as the electoral college that is expected to cast more than 300 ballots for president-elect Joe Biden meets on Monday to vote.

“No, it’s not over. We keep going. And we’re going to continue to go forward,” Mr Trump said of his campaign’s challenges to the election results in a pre-taped interview with Fox & Friends Weekend.

The interview was recorded on Saturday and aired early on Sunday.

On Friday the Supreme Court roundly rejected a lawsuit from Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton which called for throwing out the election results in the four decisive swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan — all of which broke for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden.

The nine justices — three of whom were nominated by Mr Trump over the last four years and confirmed by a GOP Senate — dismissed the case on the grounds that Texas did not have legal standing to challenge how another state ran its elections.

In the months leading up to the election and the weeks since, a number of Republicans have made baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. 

Dozens of state and federal courts dismissed legal challenge after legal challenge brought by Trump’s campaign questioning state and local election processes, with judges pointing to the paucity — or, often, the complete lack — of substantiating evidence.

Lawmakers on the right have either fallen in line behind the president or remained circumspect about his bluster.

On Sunday, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said that he wouldn’t acknowledge Mr Biden as the president-elect even after the Electoral College’s expected vote for the Democrat on Monday.

The legal process ought to play out to its end, Mr Scalise said.

In the president’s Sunday interview with Fox News, he resumed his criticism of Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp for refusing to overturn the Georgia election results, which would have disenfranchised millions of people in the Peach State who delivered a victory for Mr Biden at the ballot box.

“We have a governor, Republican governor, that’s worse than a Democrat,” Mr Trump said, claiming that it’s Mr Kemp’s actions — and not his own false rhetoric — that’s jeopardizing the campaigns of GOP Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

“He’s terrible, and he’s hurting Kelly and David very badly, the senators that are terrific people,” Mr Trump said of the senators who are in runoff races set for 5 January.

As the formalities of solemnising the 2020 presidential election drag on with the electoral vote on Monday and Congress’ certification of that vote slated for 6 January, Mr Trump lamented that time is running out.

“We’re going to speed it up as much as we can. But you can only go so fast. They give us very little time,” he said.

The interview featured the usual fare of baseless claims and conspiracy theories about election fraud, despite the fact the president’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, has denied such things happened. 

Most judges have dismissed Republican legal challenges to the election because the plaintiffs either haven’t had standing or because their evidence was sparse or nonexistent.

Mr Trump claimed, falsely, that if only judges would agree to hear his campaign’s cases, then they would rule in his favour.

“But no judge has had the courage [to let the cases be heard], including the Supreme Court. I am so disappointed in them,” Mr Trump said.