Trump acknowledges Biden victory before clarifying he's not conceding

President Trump appeared to recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential race, but quickly sought to clarify that he still has no intention of conceding the election as his long-shot legal bids aimed at challenging the results in several states continue.

Jasmine Le

[email protected] November 16, 2020 | 10:37

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(Video: CNN)

As reported by New York Times, the President kept insisting that “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go.” The dueling tweets came as Mr. Trump continued to lie about the conduct of the vote-counting process, falsely insisting that Mr. Biden’s victory was the result of a “Rigged” election orchestrated by the “Fake & Silent” media.

His first tweet came Sunday morning at 7:47. Referring to Mr. Biden, the president said that “he won.” That represented the first time Mr. Trump had publicly said what his advisers have been telling him for days privately: His re-election bid failed and Mr. Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, New York Times reported.

After a flurry of tweets and news reports about his “concession,” Mr. Trump insisted that he had been misunderstood.

Mr. Trump then clarified in a second tweet that he does not, in fact, believe Mr. Biden defeated him in the presidential election, according to CBS News.

"He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!" the president tweeted.

Despite Mr. Trump's unfounded claims that the election was rigged, federal stakeholders focused on elections infrastructure said in a statement Thursday that the November 3 election was "the most secure in American history."

Trump's tweet on Nov 15 (Photo: Captured)

"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," the statement posted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said.

Still, the president's campaign continues to pursue legal challenges to the results in several states, though they are highly unlikely to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Biden is moving forward with his transition despite Mr. Trump's unwillingness to acknowledge the results of the election, making key White House appointments and tapping policy experts to begin a government-wide review of federal agencies.

The rapid online flip-flop made it clear that Mr. Trump is still refusing to abandon the lies about the election being rigged and stolen that he has been spreading since Election Day, inflaming anger among his supporters about his defeat.

In the same tweet in which he appeared to acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory, Mr. Trump claimed again that “all of the mechanical ‘glitches’ that took place on Election Night were really THEM getting caught trying to steal votes.” Twitter quickly labeled almost all of Mr. Trump’s Sunday morning tweets “disputed.”

Ron Klain, who Mr. Biden announced last week would be his chief of staff, said on Sunday that Mr. Trump’s tweet provided “further confirmation” of Mr. Biden’s victory.

“Donald Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden President or not president,” Mr. Klain said. “The American people did that.”

Mr. Trump’s online commentary followed a series of tweets on Saturday in which he egged on thousands of his supporters at a pro-Trump gathering in Washington with fake allegations about voter fraud as he continued to push legal challenges and deny that Mr. Biden was the president-elect.

(Photo: The Atlantic)

“The hand recount taking place in Georgia is a waste of time,” Mr. Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon, making false claims about election officials in that state where a recount had been called by Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and the state’s secretary of state. “They are not showing the matching signatures. Call off the recount until they allow the MATCH. Don’t let the Radical Left Dems STEAL THE ELECTION!”

After reports of some violent clashes between the president’s supporters in Washington and anti-Trump activists, Mr. Trump did not seek to calm tensions but instead lashed out, saying that “ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills,” and urged the police to move in aggressively.

“DC Police, get going — do your job and don’t hold back!!!” the president wrote.

It appears certain that the president’s initial Twitter acknowledgment of Mr. Biden’s victory was not an indication that he intends to offer a more formal concession any time in the near future. And there was no indication that his tweet would immediately cause the administrator of the General Services Administration to officially allow the Biden transition team to have access to money and information they are due.

Mr. Trump played golf at his Virginia club on Sunday and had no public events on his official schedule.

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Jasmine Le