Trump releases video repeating debunked election fraud claims

In a 46-minute speech from the White House posted to social media, Donald Trump accused Democrats of ‘stealing’ the US election.

United States President Donald Trump again alleged fraud and accused the Democrats of 'stealing' the election [Evan Vucci/AP Photo]

President Donald Trump delivered his lengthiest call to overturn the United States election results Wednesday, repeating a litany of debunked conspiracy theories as reasons to deny President-elect Joe Biden a victory.

During a 46-minute speech from the White House, posted to Facebook, Trump insisted on challenging what he says is “pervasive fraud” surrounding the election, calling it a “national disgrace” and accusing Democrats of “stealing” the election.

“The constitutional process must be allowed to continue. We are going to defend the honesty of the vote by ensuring that every legal ballot is counted and that no illegal ballot is counted,” he said.

“If we are right about the fraud, Joe Biden can’t be president,” Trump said about allegations of fraud that have been investigated and determined to be false and tossed out of courtrooms.

Trump’s own US Attorney General William Barr said after asking the Justice Department and the FBI to look into fraud claims that fraud does not exist “on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election”.

Trump’s video was flagged as “disputed” on Twitter and tagged with a label on Facebook that states “Joe Biden is the projected winner” of the election.

His speech comes a day after he acknowledged at a White House holiday reception that he may have lost the election.

“It’s been an amazing four years,” Trump told the crowd. “We’re trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”

The video of Trump’s holiday reception appearance Tuesday was streamed live on Facebook by an attendee, the Associated Press news agency reported.

At the holiday party, Trump also ran down the list of baseless allegations of election fraud.

“It’s certainly an unusual year. We won an election. But they don’t like that,” Trump told the group, adding: “I call it a rigged election, and I always will.”

As Trump continues rallying his supporters around the idea that the election was illegitimate, Republicans in Georgia, where there are two runoff elections on January 5 that will determine which party controls the US Senate, are growing concerned that Trump voters there will not turn out to vote next month.

Complicating matters are Trump backers who are aggressively calling for Georgia voters to “boycott” the elections. Attorneys Sidney Powell, who briefly worked on Trump’s post-election legal team, and Lin Wood held a rally on Wednesday where they not only demanded voters boycott the runoffs, but called for Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp to be jailed, accusing him of being complicit in the alleged “fraud”.

“As far as I’m concerned, lock him up,” Wood said.

Confusing matters even more, the Republican National Committee is holding a rally on Saturday featuring Trump and the two Republican senators up for re-election next month, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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