President lauds Operation Warp Speed success but says New York will have to wait for vaccine
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump broke his eight day silence with an update on Operation Warp Speed, the project to distribute a vaccine when it is approved by the Food & Drug Administration.
The Rose Garden briefing comes on the day that most networks finally called Georgia for Joe Biden and North Carolina for the president, putting the electoral college votes at 306 to 232 in favour of the Democrat.
In a slight verbal stumble, the president came close to acknowledging that the administration may be in its last days. No formal statement was made regarding the election result. He did not answer any questions.
Trump is being tipped to announce a fresh presidential run in 2024 as he continues to refuse to acknowledge his election defeat to Mr Biden, now president-elect and preparing for government as Mr Trump fires out conspiracy theories in angry tweets from the Oval Office.
The president has meanwhile been branded an “elixir of racial anxiety” by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in an advanced extract from the latter’s new memoir A Promised Land, reflecting on the toxic political undercurrent the former real estate mogul and reality TV star was able to capitalise on to win the White House in 2016.
Mr Obama has also made his first remarks on the current undemocratic impasse in Washington, telling Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes that the Republican Party is “humouring” the incumbent in his delusional rejection of the outcome and taking the country down “a dangerous path”.
• Read more: Follow live updates in our dedicated election liveblog
Donald Trump Jr complains about Pfizer drug success
Donald Trump’s oldest son took to Twitter to complain about the announcement of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine just days after the election.
Republicans expect little Trump money to actually be spent on lawsuits
What next for Mike Pence?
The vice president spent months on the campaign trail alongside his boss Donald Trump right up to the small hours of the morning after election day, and now seems ready to take some time off. Here’s Namita Singh with the details:
What next for Pence? Vice President ‘heading to Florida on personal trip’ as Trump refuses to concede
Vice President Mike Pence is expected to stay put in Sanibel, Florida from Tuesday till Saturday
Ilhan Omar on defence secretary firing
Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar greeted Monday’s news that defence secretary Mark Esper had been fired with a joking shrug on Twitter, writing, “They’re all getting replaced soon."
Ilhan Omar sums up the fate of Trump's cabinet with a simple emoji as defence secretary is 'terminated'
Trump fires his defence secretary weeks before he himself will have to vacate the White House
Trump moves ahead with legal action threat
Despite no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, has authorised federal prosecutors across the US to pursue "substantial allegations" of voting irregularities, if they exist.
Mr Barr's action comes days after the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, defeated the Republican president and raises the prospect that Mr Trump will use the Justice Department to try to challenge the outcome.
Mr Trump has not conceded the election and has instead claimed without evidence that there has been a widespread, multi-state conspiracy by Democrats to skew the vote tally in Mr Biden's favour.
Associated Press
Trump campaign adviser says ‘concede’ is ‘not in our vocabulary’
Let’s have a little recap shall we?
Jason Miller was interviewed by Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo on Monday and insisted that the administration will not concede the US presidential election to Joe Biden and will persist with lawsuits in states whose outcome it disputes.
Miller claims the lawsuits are about the "entire future of elections in America", not just Trump’s wounded ego.
"This is about election integrity," he said. "If we can't get this right, why think we will ever have confidence in these elections going forward."
He told Bartiromo he expects to see automatic recounts in Wisconsin as well as Arizona and Georgia and to see legal challenges mounted in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.
"We filed a lawsuit in Arizona on Saturday night, and this will be going through everything from dead people voting to instances where there was backdating of mail-in ballots," Miller said.
“We are going to pursue everything we have in front of us. We are going to make sure the American public has full confidence in these elections... we are going through all these, so when the Electoral College gets together to certify this election, the American people can have full confidence in its outcome."
The pronouncement has, naturally, been met with derision.
Graeme Massie has this report.
Trump campaign advisor shuts down idea he may concede ‘that word is not in our vocabulary’
Republican aide says ‘fraud’ investigations will continue
Biden labelled ‘ambulance chaser’ by embittered Fox News pundit
In a further show of petulance and jealousy, Trump retweeted that attack on Joe Biden from Fox talking head Mark Levin, who whined that the election victor “had nothing to do with the vaccine”.
That came after Pfizer lambasted the president over the White House attempting to take credit for the breakthrough without playing any part in its development whatsoever.
Trump claims vaccine news was held back to hurt his election chances
Donald Trump has accused the Democratic Party and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of conspiring to delay an announcement on Pfizer and BioNTech’s potential coronavirus vaccine until after last week’s election, which he lost to Joe Biden, who is now president-elect.
Trump used Twitter to attack his opponents and the drug’s manufacturer for not having the “courage” to break the news before last Tuesday’s ballot.
How much longer can he keep up this bad loser act? Into December? All the way up until Biden’s inauguration on 20 January? Or will it just go on for the rest of his natural life with fewer and fewer people listening?
I’m already bored.
If he wanted to surprise us and win the conciliatory pat on the back he so badly needs, he should concede with good grace.
Graeme Massie has the latest.
Trump accuses FDA and Democrats of holding back Covid vaccine until after election
Pfizer announced drug success days after president defeated
Bill Barr authorises Justice Department to investigate ‘substantial allegations’ of voting irregularities
In addition to the president and his campaign team’s griping and refusal to do the decent thing, US attorney general William Barr - who met in secret with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Capitol Hill yesterday - has authorised federal prosecutors to investigate any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities that might have swung the presidential election results away from Trump.
In a memo to US attorneys, Barr wrote that the Justice Department could conduct investigations “if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state”.
The administration has yet to provide any evidence of voter fraud that comes even close to “apparently-credible”.
Barr’s move allows prosecutors to circumvent longstanding policy that would otherwise prevent dramatic actions being taken between the day of the election and the formal certification of results.
Justin Vallejo has more details.
Attorney General gives go ahead for election probe
The states have until 8 December to resolve election disputes while members of the Electoral College have until 14 December to finalise the results
Top Justice Department official steps down after Barr empowers voter fraud probe
Richard Pilger, director of the election crimes branch of the Justice Department, stepped down from jos post just hours after Barr’s big move on behalf of the president on Monday, departing a position he has held since 2010.
In an email, Pilger told colleagues that the attorney general’s decision is “abrogating the 40-year-old Non-Interference Policy for ballot fraud investigation in the period prior to elections becoming certified and uncontested.”
“Having familiarised myself with the new policy and its ramifications… I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the election crimes branch,” wrote Pilger in his email, which was also shared by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights on Twitter.
Mayank Aggarwal reports.
Top DOJ official steps down over Trump’s election fraud investigations
Civil rights organisations say resignation shows how grossly politicised DOJ has become under Barr
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