AFP
AFP
AFP
AFP

Isolated Trump loses media allies while trying to salvage presidency


James Reinl
  • English
  • Arabic

US President Donald Trump was increasingly isolated on Friday, with top Republicans and conservative media allies rejecting his claims of widespread voter fraud as his chances of election success almost evaporated.

Mr Trump posted an erratic series of Twitter messages from the White House as his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, 77, made gains in key battleground states and readied to deliver a prime time national television address.

The 74-year-old president continued alleging widespread voter fraud and counting irregularities in Tuesday’s election, but some key Republicans rejected the unfounded claims as Democrats readied to welcome Mr Biden as president-elect.

With his presidency hanging by a thread, Mr Trump said it was vital to have a Republican in the West Wing to keep a check on a Senate in which left-leaning Democrats gained seats in the November 3 election.

“With the attack by the Radical Left Dems on the Republican Senate, the Presidency becomes even more important!” Mr Trump told his 88.4 million followers on Twitter after it became clear that Mr Biden was on track to win the presidency.

Mr Trump posted a series of missives after Mr Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania, where a haul of 20 electoral votes would put him past the 270 threshold for victory in Tuesday’s vote. The former Vice President also made gains in Georgia.

Mr Trump also quoted the conservative lawyer Ken Starr, who said Pennsylvania had “conducted itself in a horrible lawless way” and “flagrantly violated the constitution” by excluding observers from poll-counting centres.

“We have to go back to the state level and how this morass came to be in the first instance,” added the president, in reference to the adjudication powers of state lawmakers in the event of election disputes.

In Washington, a liberal-leaning city where some 95 per cent of voters chose Mr Biden, crowds gathered beyond the new White House security fence in a celebratory mood, playing the Los del Rio’s Spanish dance classic Macarena and other lively tunes.

Elsewhere, hardcore Trump supporters have rallied outside vote-counting stations in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other battleground states, echoing the president’s complaint of irregularities and demanding to monitor the process inside.

Two men armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and other military-style gear were arrested at a Philadelphia counting centre, where they reportedly said they were trying to “straighten out” the tally process inside.

A pro-Trump Facebook group called Stop the Steal was created on Wednesday and quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of followers, who shared posts about voting fraud. It was shut down by the tech giant’s administrators after 22 hours.

Mr Trump is trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, evada, Georgia and other key states that make it unlikely he can amass the 270 electoral college votes he needs to keep his job.

In a series of bad omens for Mr Trump, his long-standing media allies Fox News, the New York Post and a number of Republican heavyweights distanced themselves from the 45th president's unfounded claims of voting fraud.

Fox anchor Bret Baier fact-checked Trump after he took to a White House podium Thursday to claim the election was fraudulent and that he was being cheated. “We have not seen the hard evidence,” Baier told viewers.

As Biden took the lead in the Pennsylvania vote count for the first time, 'Fox & Friends' - a Fox show that routinely praises the president - was airing a segment about Trump increasing his support among some minority voters during the election.

A New York Post headline described a "Downcast Trump" making "baseless election fraud" claims in his address from the White House on Thursday night and treated a victory for Mr Biden as a near-certainty.

Fox News, another outlet owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, angered many Republicans on Wednesday when it projected Mr Biden would win in Arizona — a state Mr Trump needed to keep his White House dreams alive.

Meanwhile, prominent figures such as John Bolton, the president’s former National Security Adviser, and Republican lawmakers from as far afield as Texas and Illinois, bashed Mr Trump for not accepting the still-unfolding results of the November 3 election.

Mr Bolton, who left the administration acrimoniously, hit out at his former boss and compared him unfavourably to Abraham Lincoln.

“All candidates are entitled to pursue appropriate election-law remedies if they have evidence supporting their claims,” Mr Bolton said on Twitter. “They should certainly not lie. The first Republican president was called "Honest Abe" for a reason.”

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman from Illinois, rejected Mr Trump’s call for a halt to vote-counting in some battleground states and urged the president to back up his voter-fraud claims with evidence.

“If you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court,” Mr Kinzinger wrote on Twitter. “STOP Spreading debunked misinformation... This is getting insane.”

Will Hurd, a Republican congressman from Texas, also turned on the president, accusing him of “undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence”.

“It undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon,” Mr Hurd said on Twitter.

Other Republican heavyweights, such as House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, have continued to back the president and repeat his unfounded allegations of voting fraud.

Others discussed what Mr Trump would do once he leaves the White House in January, assuming that Mr Biden wins and the president’s raft of electoral legal challenges and an appeal for US Supreme Court intervention fail to gain traction.

Speaking at the Institute for International and European Affairs on Friday, Mick Mulvaney, the former acting White House chief of staff, said Mr Trump would “likely” run again in 2024 if he loses the November 3 election and would “absolutely” stay in politics.

Others questioned whether a post-presidency Mr Trump would struggle to settle debts on his property empire or face investigation or prosecution for possible crimes involving obstruction of justice or related to his often-queried tax returns.

“If Biden wins, Trump’s lame-duck period could be more tumultuous than ever,” Ian Bremmer, a commentator and founder of a political risk consultancy, the Eurasia Group, said on Twitter.

“Facing legal troubles, Trump could opt to self-pardon, a move with no precedent in American history.”

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Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
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Our legal columnist

Name: Yousef Al Bahar

Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994

Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers

Fines for littering

In Dubai:

Dh200 for littering or spitting in the Dubai Metro

Dh500 for throwing cigarette butts or chewing gum on the floor, or littering from a vehicle. 
Dh1,000 for littering on a beach, spitting in public places, throwing a cigarette butt from a vehicle

In Sharjah and other emirates
Dh500 for littering - including cigarette butts and chewing gum - in public places and beaches in Sharjah
Dh2,000 for littering in Sharjah deserts
Dh500 for littering from a vehicle in Ras Al Khaimah
Dh1,000 for littering from a car in Abu Dhabi
Dh1,000 to Dh100,000 for dumping waste in residential or public areas in Al Ain
Dh10,000 for littering at Ajman's beaches 

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The specs

Engine 60kwh FWD

Battery Rimac 120kwh Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (LiNiMnCoO2) chemistry

Power 204hp Torque 360Nm

Price, base / as tested Dh174,500 

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THE BIO: Martin Van Almsick

Hometown: Cologne, Germany

Family: Wife Hanan Ahmed and their three children, Marrah (23), Tibijan (19), Amon (13)

Favourite dessert: Umm Ali with dark camel milk chocolate flakes

Favourite hobby: Football

Breakfast routine: a tall glass of camel milk

THE SPECS

Engine: 4.4-litre V8

Transmission: eight-speed automatic

Power: 523hp

Torque: 750Nm

Price: Dh469,000

Defence review at a glance

• Increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 but given “turbulent times it may be necessary to go faster”

• Prioritise a shift towards working with AI and autonomous systems

• Invest in the resilience of military space systems.

• Number of active reserves should be increased by 20%

• More F-35 fighter jets required in the next decade

• New “hybrid Navy” with AUKUS submarines and autonomous vessels

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Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
Director: Venkat Prabhu
Rating: 2/5
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Her most famous song

Aghadan Alqak (Would I Ever Find You Again)?

Would I ever find you again
You, the heaven of my love, my yearning and madness;
You, the kiss to my soul, my cheer and
sadness?
Would your lights ever break the night of my eyes again?
Would I ever find you again?
This world is volume and you're the notion,
This world is night and you're the lifetime,
This world is eyes and you're the vision,
This world is sky and you're the moon time,
Have mercy on the heart that belongs to you.

Lyrics: Al Hadi Adam; Composer: Mohammed Abdel Wahab

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Company profile

Company: Rent Your Wardrobe 

Date started: May 2021 

Founder: Mamta Arora 

Based: Dubai 

Sector: Clothes rental subscription 

Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded 

In numbers

1,000 tonnes of waste collected daily:

  • 800 tonnes converted into alternative fuel
  • 150 tonnes to landfill
  • 50 tonnes sold as scrap metal

800 tonnes of RDF replaces 500 tonnes of coal

Two conveyor lines treat more than 350,000 tonnes of waste per year

25 staff on site

 

Sri Lanka's T20I squad

Thisara Perera (captain), Dilshan Munaweera, Danushka Gunathilaka, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Ashan Priyanjan, Mahela Udawatte, Dasun Shanaka, Sachith Pathirana, Vikum Sanjaya, Lahiru Gamage, Seekkuge Prasanna, Vishwa Fernando, Isuru Udana, Jeffrey Vandersay and Chathuranga de Silva.

Rebel%20Moon%20-%20Part%20One%3A%20A%20Child%20of%20Fire
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EZack%20Snyder%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESofia%20Boutella%2C%20Djimon%20Hounsou%2C%20Ed%20Skrein%2C%20Michiel%20Huisman%2C%20Charlie%20Hunnam%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
AndhaDhun

Director: Sriram Raghavan

Producer: Matchbox Pictures, Viacom18

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu, Radhika Apte, Anil Dhawan

Rating: 3.5/5

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