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Trump slammed for attacking legal vote-counting efforts and claiming victory: 'Utterly undemocratic and dangerous'

CNN journalist Jeff Zeleny said, 'There are thousands and thousands of Trump votes yet to be counted in MI, WI, PA, GA and beyond. Talk about disenfranchisement'

President Donald Trump on Wednesday, November 4, dropped a bombshell in a press conference at the White House by attacking legitimate vote-counting efforts saying efforts to tally all ballots disenfranchised his supporters. Speaking in the East Room in the wee hours where he was accompanied by his family members, the incumbent president said: “Millions and millions of people voted for us. A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.”

The 74-year-old president said he was preparing to announce victory earlier in the evening and celebrate when things were suddenly called off. He stressed that states, where the ballot tallies were showing him in the lead, should be called in his favor, despite the fact that a sizable portion of the votes was yet to be counted. 

“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump said and then added that it was a fraud on the people of America and termed it an “embarrassment” to the nation.

“Frankly we did win this election,” Trump, who is being challenged by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, said, adding that he would go to the Supreme Court and that he wanted “all voting to stop”. 

Trump’s words faced a massive backlash from politicians, the media and common people. The legal experts also expressed shock over the words that he uttered, criticizing the commander-in-chief for questioning the authenticity of the election procedure, which marks the foundation of a democratic system.

Senior GOP lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg expresses shock

Senior Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg expressed his shock over Trump’s remarks. Ginsberg, a Trump critic who co-chaired the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, said the president’s words had no basis in law. The veteran legal expert also said that there is no evidence to back Trump’s claim of the fraud and criticized his plan to go to the highest court. 

“If you have objections to either the particular ballots or to the process, then you have remedies after the fact from each state individual contests laws or recount laws if the margins are close enough,” Ginsberg told CNN’s Jake Tapper and added that he has had no knowledge about a president speaking like the way Trump did in the past. 

Former Obama campaign aide calls it darkest day

David Plouffe, former president Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, also voiced his shock to say it was the darkest day in American democracy. Plouffe just said recently that the president’s decision to send lawyers as soon as the election gets over was “quite a loser message”. 

FiveThirtyEight’s senior political writer Clara Malone also slammed the president. In a tweet, she said: “Predictably and dismayingly and FALSELY Trump "goes there" declaring victory.” She, however, backed Vice President Mike Pence’s more conventional words about a probable Republican victory, saying: “Pence strikes a different note in his very brief remarks, saying that the votes are still being counted.”

Political journalists lash out at Trump

CNN White House reporter Kevin Liptak also posted tweets and retweeted those from others criticizing the president. He retweeted a tweet posted by fellow CNN journalist Jeff Zeleny that said: “Never mind the utterly undemocratic and dangerous statement President Trump made by prematurely declaring victory and suggesting fraud is taking place, there are thousands and thousands of Trump votes yet to be counted in MI, WI, PA, GA and beyond. Talk about disenfranchisement.”

In another post, he said the speeches made by Trump and VP Pence were not compatible. “It's either "we want all voting to stop" or "while the votes continue to be counted, we're gonna remain vigilant." Those are not ideas that co-exist,” he said. 

ABC News’s White House and Capitol Hill reporter Katherine Faulders took a dig at Trump’s remarks to say: “This is unreal. Sources said he wouldn’t do it, and he just did.”

John Lyons, a senior journalist, ABC’s head of investigative journalist and executive editor, compared Wednesday’s situation with that which prevailed in Iran in 2009. In a tweet, he said: “I WAS IN IRAN IN 2009 when Pres Ahmadinejad claimed victory before counting finished. He stole the election. It led to horrible violence around Iran. The US and Australia condemned it. So who condemns it when it happens in the US?”

'It plays directly into Trump's narrative'

ABC’s Brisbane-based journalist Peter Marsh penned an article on Sunday, November 1, in which he spoke about the “worst possible” outcomes of this election. He spoke to Lawrence Douglas, a professor or law at Amherst College, over it and the latter told him over a narrow win for either Trump or Biden or a closely fought election. 

“It plays directly into Trump's narrative. It permits him to kind of spin his conspiracy theories. It permits him to further  muddy the waters,” Douglas was quoted as saying. He also added: “If one had to look for a state that is auditioning for the role of Florida in 2000, you have to say it's Pennsylvania. It’s certainly possible that some issue involving the count of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania could be kicked up to the Supreme Court.

“The thing that spared us in 2000 wasn't the Supreme Court intervening to put an end to the Florida recount. It was [Democratic nominee] Al Gore conceding on the next day,” he said, adding: “This normative substructure that people buy into is needed in order to make the whole system work. If people don't buy into that then the system is going to be incredibly vulnerable. It's really a combination of luck and the character of people seeking higher office which has saved us from these meltdowns in the past.”