US President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for COVID-19. He is the latest member of Trump's inner circle to contract the virus.

Taking to Twitter, the President said: "@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!"

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.<a href="https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RudyGiuliani</a>, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1335679426516881409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Giuliani was admitted Sunday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington.

He has been spearheading Trump’s floundering effort to overturn his Nov. 3 election loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden through a flurry of lawsuits. Both Trump and Giuliani have repeatedly claimed, contrary to evidence, that the outcome was marred by widespread fraud.

State and federal officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale.

Giuliani visited Georgia on Thursday, where he urged state lawmakers to stop certification of Biden’s win after making similar pleas in Michigan on Wednesday and Arizona on Monday.

Trump and many of his close associates have balked at public health officials’ advice to wear masks and avoid crowds to stem transmission of the respiratory illness, which has roared to record levels in the United States as winter approaches.

Giuliani, who developed an international profile as “America’s Mayor” for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has faced mounting legal troubles during the Trump administration.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine, and two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have been charged with campaign finance violations.

(With inputs from agencies)

US President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for COVID-19. He is the latest member of Trump's inner circle to contract the virus. Taking to Twitter, the President said: "@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!

US President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for COVID-19. He is the latest member of Trump's inner circle to contract the virus. Taking to Twitter, the President said: "@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!" .@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2020 × Giuliani was admitted Sunday to Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. He has been spearheading Trump’s floundering effort to overturn his Nov. 3 election loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden through a flurry of lawsuits. Both Trump and Giuliani have repeatedly claimed, contrary to evidence, that the outcome was marred by widespread fraud. State and federal officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of fraud on any significant scale. Giuliani visited Georgia on Thursday, where he urged state lawmakers to stop certification of Biden’s win after making similar pleas in Michigan on Wednesday and Arizona on Monday. Trump and many of his close associates have balked at public health officials’ advice to wear masks and avoid crowds to stem transmission of the respiratory illness, which has roared to record levels in the United States as winter approaches. Giuliani, who developed an international profile as “America’s Mayor” for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has faced mounting legal troubles during the Trump administration. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine, and two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have been charged with campaign finance violations. (With inputs from agencies)

Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani hospitalised after testing positive for covid-19

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was, Good luck with that.

After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn’t seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following; a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal; and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And after I wrote about Biden’s comparatively tiny internet presence last spring, I heard from legions of nervous Democratic strategists who worried that using “heal the nation” messaging against the MAGA meme army was like bringing a pinwheel to a prizefight.

But in the end, the bed-wetters were wrong. Biden won, and despite having many fewer followers and much less engagement on social media than Trump, his campaign raised record amounts of money and ultimately neutralized Trump’s vaunted “Death Star” — the name his erstwhile campaign manager, Brad Parscale, gave to the campaign’s digital operation.

Figuring out whether any particular online strategy decisively moved the needle for Biden is probably impossible. Offline factors, such as Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, undoubtedly played a major role. But since successful campaigns breed imitators, it’s worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it.

After the election, I spoke with Flaherty, along with more than a dozen other people who worked on the Biden digital team. They told me that while the internet alone didn’t get Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances.

1. Lean on Influencers and Validators

In the early days of his campaign, Biden’s team envisioned setting up its own digital media empire. It posted videos to his official YouTube channel, conducted virtual forums and even set up a podcast hosted by Biden, “Here’s the Deal.” But those efforts were marred by technical glitches and lukewarm receptions, and they never came close to rivaling the reach of Trump’s social media machine.

So the campaign pivoted to a different strategy, which involved expanding Biden’s reach by working with social media influencers and “validators,” people who were trusted by the kinds of voters the campaign hoped to reach.

“We were not the biggest megaphone compared to Trump, so we had to help arm any who were,” said Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic strategy firm that worked with the Biden campaign.

One validator at the top of the team’s list was Brené Brown, a popular author and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like courage and vulnerability. Brown has a devoted following among suburban women — a critical demographic for Biden’s campaign — and when Biden appeared as a guest on her podcast to talk about his own stories of grief and empathy, the campaign viewed it as a coup.

Also high on the list was actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, whose following skews center-right and male. Johnson’s endorsement this fall of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, created a so-called permission structure for his followers — including some who may have voted for Trump in 2016 — to support Biden, members of the campaign staff told me.

Celebrity endorsements aren’t a new campaign strategy. But Biden’s team also worked with lesser-known influencers, including YouTubers like Liza Koshy, and struck a partnership with a group of creators known as TikTok for Biden, which the campaign paid to promote pro-Biden content on the teen-dominated video app TikTok.

Perhaps the campaign’s most unlikely validator was Fox News. Headlines from the outlet that reflected well on Biden were relatively rare, but the campaign’s tests showed that they were more persuasive to on-the-fence voters than headlines from other outlets. So when they appeared — as they did in October when Fox News covered an endorsement that Biden received from more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials — the campaign paid to promote them on Facebook and other platforms.

“The headlines from the sources that were the most surprising were the ones that had the most impact,” said Rebecca Rinkevich, Biden’s digital rapid response director. “When people saw a Fox News headline endorsing Joe Biden, it made them stop scrolling and think.”

2. Tune Out Twitter and Focus on ‘Facebook Moms’

A frequent criticism of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was that it was too focused on appealing to the elite, high-information crowd on Twitter instead of paying attention to the much larger group of voters who get their news and information on Facebook. In 2020, Biden’s digital team was committed to avoiding a repeat.

“The whole Biden campaign ethos was, ‘Twitter isn’t real life,’” Flaherty said. “There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyperaware of your own ideological corner.”

As it focused on Facebook, the Biden campaign paid extra attention to “Facebook moms” — women who spend a lot of time sharing cute and uplifting content, and who the campaign believed could be persuaded to vote for Biden with positive messages about his character. Its target audience, Flaherty said, was women “who would go out and share a video of troops coming home or who would follow The Dodo,” a website known for heartwarming animal videos.

One successful clip aimed at this group showed Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times.

Voters also responded positively to videos in which Biden showed his command of foreign policy. In January, after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the campaign posted a three-minute Facebook video of Biden explaining the situation. Despite the snoozy title — “Joe Biden Discusses Donald Trump’s Recent Actions in the Middle East” — the video became one of the campaign’s earliest viral successes.

The campaign experimented with lighter fare, putting virtual Biden for President lawn signs in Animal Crossing, the hit Nintendo game, and setting up a custom “Build Back Better” map in Fortnite, the popular battle royale game, in hopes of reaching younger voters. Some of these efforts were more gimmicky than others. But they all reflected the campaign’s decision to take a pro-Biden message to as many corners of the internet as possible.

“Our goal was really to meet people where they were,” said Christian Tom, head of Biden’s digital partnerships team.

3. Build a Facebook Brain Trust

One of the campaign’s goals, Biden staff members told me, was promoting content that increased “social trust” — in other words, avoiding the kind of energizing, divisive fare that Trump has used to great effect.

But Biden’s digital strategy wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. The campaign also joined ranks with a number of popular left-wing Facebook pages, many of which are known for putting out aggressive anti-Trump content.

They called this group the “Rebel Alliance,” a jokey nod to Parscale’s “Death Star,” and it eventually grew to include the proprietors of pages like Occupy Democrats, Call to Activism, The Other 98 Percent and Being Liberal. On the messaging app Signal, the page owners formed a group text that became a kind of rapid-response brain trust for the campaign.

“I had the freedom to go for the jugular,” said Rafael Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats and Ridin’ With Biden, another big pro-Biden Facebook page.

Rivero, who was paid by the Biden campaign as a consultant, told me that in addition to cross-posting its content on Occupy Democrats, he often offered the campaign advice based on what was performing well on his pages.

During the Republican National Convention, for example, Rivero noticed that a meme posted by Ridin’ With Biden about Trump’s comments on Medicare and Social Security was going viral. He notified the rest of the Rebel Alliance group and recommended that the campaign borrow the message for Biden’s official Twitter account.

“It was sort of a big, distributed message test,” Flaherty said of the Rebel Alliance. “If it was popping through Occupy or any of our other partners, we knew there was heat there.”

These left-wing pages gave the campaign a bigger Facebook audience than it could have reached on its own. But they also allowed Biden to keep most of his messaging positive while still tapping into the anger and outrage many Democratic voters felt.

4. Promote ‘Small-Batch Creators,’ Not Just Slick Commercials

In its internal tests, the Biden campaign found that traditional political ads — professionally produced, slick-looking 30-second spots — were far less effective than impromptu, behind-the-scenes footage and ads that featured regular voters talking directly into their smartphones or webcams about why they were voting for Biden.

“All our testing showed that higher production value was not better,” said Nathaniel Lubin, a Biden campaign consultant. “The things that were realer, more grainy and cheaper to produce were more credible.”

So the campaign commissioned a series of simple, lo-fi ads targeted at key groups of voters, like a series of self-recorded videos by Biden supporters who didn’t vote in 2016, talking about their regrets.

In addition to hiring traditional Democratic ad firms, the campaign also teamed up with what it called “small-batch creators” — lesser-known producers and digital creators, some of whom had little experience making political ads. Among the small-batch creators it hired: Scotty Wagner, a former art school professor from California, who produced a video about young people who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary sharing things they didn’t know about Biden, and Jawanza Tucker, a TikTok creator, who made a video styled after a TikTok meme about why he was voting for Biden.

5. Fight Misinformation, but Pick Your Battles

One of the biggest obstacles the Biden campaign faced was a tsunami of misinformation, much of it amplified by the Trump campaign and its right-wing media allies. There were baseless rumors about Biden’s health, unfounded questions about Harris' citizenship and spurious claims about the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter.

The campaign formed an in-house effort to combat these rumors, known as the “Malarkey Factory.” But it picked its battles carefully, using data from voter testing to guide its responses.

When the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged, for example, some Democrats — worried that it would be 2020’s version of the Hillary Clinton email story — suggested that the Biden campaign should forcefully denounce it. But the campaign’s testing found that most voters in its key groups couldn’t follow the complexities of the allegations and that it wasn’t changing their opinion of Joe Biden.

“The Hunter Biden conversation was many times larger than the Hillary Clinton email conversation, but it really didn’t stick because people think Joe Biden’s a good guy,” said Bleeker of Bully Pulpit Interactive.

The campaign still responded to the reports, and Biden defended his son on the debate stage. But it stopped short of mounting a full-throated countermessaging campaign.

When it did respond to misinformation, the Biden team tried to address the root of the narrative. After right-wing influencers posted compilation videos of Biden stumbling over his words and appearing forgetful, the campaign surveyed voters to try to figure out whether the attempt to paint him as mentally unfit was resonating. It discovered that the real concern for many people wasn’t Biden’s age or his health, per se, but whether he was an easily manipulated tool of the radical left.

The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events.

Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign’s focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign’s entire digital strategy — the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators — was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed.

“It was about, how do we throw the incentives of the internet for a bit of a loop?” he said. “We made a decision early that we were going to be authentically Joe Biden online, even when people were saying that was a trap.”

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was, Good luck with that.

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Donald Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was, Good luck with that. After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn’t seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following; a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal; and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And after I wrote about Biden’s comparatively tiny internet presence last spring, I heard from legions of nervous Democratic strategists who worried that using “heal the nation” messaging against the MAGA meme army was like bringing a pinwheel to a prizefight. But in the end, the bed-wetters were wrong. Biden won, and despite having many fewer followers and much less engagement on social media than Trump, his campaign raised record amounts of money and ultimately neutralized Trump’s vaunted “Death Star” — the name his erstwhile campaign manager, Brad Parscale, gave to the campaign’s digital operation. Figuring out whether any particular online strategy decisively moved the needle for Biden is probably impossible. Offline factors, such as Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, undoubtedly played a major role. But since successful campaigns breed imitators, it’s worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it. After the election, I spoke with Flaherty, along with more than a dozen other people who worked on the Biden digital team. They told me that while the internet alone didn’t get Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances. 1. Lean on Influencers and Validators In the early days of his campaign, Biden’s team envisioned setting up its own digital media empire. It posted videos to his official YouTube channel, conducted virtual forums and even set up a podcast hosted by Biden, “Here’s the Deal.” But those efforts were marred by technical glitches and lukewarm receptions, and they never came close to rivaling the reach of Trump’s social media machine. So the campaign pivoted to a different strategy, which involved expanding Biden’s reach by working with social media influencers and “validators,” people who were trusted by the kinds of voters the campaign hoped to reach. “We were not the biggest megaphone compared to Trump, so we had to help arm any who were,” said Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic strategy firm that worked with the Biden campaign. One validator at the top of the team’s list was Brené Brown, a popular author and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like courage and vulnerability. Brown has a devoted following among suburban women — a critical demographic for Biden’s campaign — and when Biden appeared as a guest on her podcast to talk about his own stories of grief and empathy, the campaign viewed it as a coup. Also high on the list was actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, whose following skews center-right and male. Johnson’s endorsement this fall of Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, created a so-called permission structure for his followers — including some who may have voted for Trump in 2016 — to support Biden, members of the campaign staff told me. Celebrity endorsements aren’t a new campaign strategy. But Biden’s team also worked with lesser-known influencers, including YouTubers like Liza Koshy, and struck a partnership with a group of creators known as TikTok for Biden, which the campaign paid to promote pro-Biden content on the teen-dominated video app TikTok. Perhaps the campaign’s most unlikely validator was Fox News. Headlines from the outlet that reflected well on Biden were relatively rare, but the campaign’s tests showed that they were more persuasive to on-the-fence voters than headlines from other outlets. So when they appeared — as they did in October when Fox News covered an endorsement that Biden received from more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials — the campaign paid to promote them on Facebook and other platforms. “The headlines from the sources that were the most surprising were the ones that had the most impact,” said Rebecca Rinkevich, Biden’s digital rapid response director. “When people saw a Fox News headline endorsing Joe Biden, it made them stop scrolling and think.” 2. Tune Out Twitter and Focus on ‘Facebook Moms’ A frequent criticism of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was that it was too focused on appealing to the elite, high-information crowd on Twitter instead of paying attention to the much larger group of voters who get their news and information on Facebook. In 2020, Biden’s digital team was committed to avoiding a repeat. “The whole Biden campaign ethos was, ‘Twitter isn’t real life,’” Flaherty said. “There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyperaware of your own ideological corner.” As it focused on Facebook, the Biden campaign paid extra attention to “Facebook moms” — women who spend a lot of time sharing cute and uplifting content, and who the campaign believed could be persuaded to vote for Biden with positive messages about his character. Its target audience, Flaherty said, was women “who would go out and share a video of troops coming home or who would follow The Dodo,” a website known for heartwarming animal videos. One successful clip aimed at this group showed Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times. Voters also responded positively to videos in which Biden showed his command of foreign policy. In January, after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the campaign posted a three-minute Facebook video of Biden explaining the situation. Despite the snoozy title — “Joe Biden Discusses Donald Trump’s Recent Actions in the Middle East” — the video became one of the campaign’s earliest viral successes. The campaign experimented with lighter fare, putting virtual Biden for President lawn signs in Animal Crossing, the hit Nintendo game, and setting up a custom “Build Back Better” map in Fortnite, the popular battle royale game, in hopes of reaching younger voters. Some of these efforts were more gimmicky than others. But they all reflected the campaign’s decision to take a pro-Biden message to as many corners of the internet as possible. “Our goal was really to meet people where they were,” said Christian Tom, head of Biden’s digital partnerships team. 3. Build a Facebook Brain Trust One of the campaign’s goals, Biden staff members told me, was promoting content that increased “social trust” — in other words, avoiding the kind of energizing, divisive fare that Trump has used to great effect. But Biden’s digital strategy wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. The campaign also joined ranks with a number of popular left-wing Facebook pages, many of which are known for putting out aggressive anti-Trump content. They called this group the “Rebel Alliance,” a jokey nod to Parscale’s “Death Star,” and it eventually grew to include the proprietors of pages like Occupy Democrats, Call to Activism, The Other 98 Percent and Being Liberal. On the messaging app Signal, the page owners formed a group text that became a kind of rapid-response brain trust for the campaign. “I had the freedom to go for the jugular,” said Rafael Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats and Ridin’ With Biden, another big pro-Biden Facebook page. Rivero, who was paid by the Biden campaign as a consultant, told me that in addition to cross-posting its content on Occupy Democrats, he often offered the campaign advice based on what was performing well on his pages. During the Republican National Convention, for example, Rivero noticed that a meme posted by Ridin’ With Biden about Trump’s comments on Medicare and Social Security was going viral. He notified the rest of the Rebel Alliance group and recommended that the campaign borrow the message for Biden’s official Twitter account. “It was sort of a big, distributed message test,” Flaherty said of the Rebel Alliance. “If it was popping through Occupy or any of our other partners, we knew there was heat there.” These left-wing pages gave the campaign a bigger Facebook audience than it could have reached on its own. But they also allowed Biden to keep most of his messaging positive while still tapping into the anger and outrage many Democratic voters felt. 4. Promote ‘Small-Batch Creators,’ Not Just Slick Commercials In its internal tests, the Biden campaign found that traditional political ads — professionally produced, slick-looking 30-second spots — were far less effective than impromptu, behind-the-scenes footage and ads that featured regular voters talking directly into their smartphones or webcams about why they were voting for Biden. “All our testing showed that higher production value was not better,” said Nathaniel Lubin, a Biden campaign consultant. “The things that were realer, more grainy and cheaper to produce were more credible.” So the campaign commissioned a series of simple, lo-fi ads targeted at key groups of voters, like a series of self-recorded videos by Biden supporters who didn’t vote in 2016, talking about their regrets. In addition to hiring traditional Democratic ad firms, the campaign also teamed up with what it called “small-batch creators” — lesser-known producers and digital creators, some of whom had little experience making political ads. Among the small-batch creators it hired: Scotty Wagner, a former art school professor from California, who produced a video about young people who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary sharing things they didn’t know about Biden, and Jawanza Tucker, a TikTok creator, who made a video styled after a TikTok meme about why he was voting for Biden. 5. Fight Misinformation, but Pick Your Battles One of the biggest obstacles the Biden campaign faced was a tsunami of misinformation, much of it amplified by the Trump campaign and its right-wing media allies. There were baseless rumors about Biden’s health, unfounded questions about Harris' citizenship and spurious claims about the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter. The campaign formed an in-house effort to combat these rumors, known as the “Malarkey Factory.” But it picked its battles carefully, using data from voter testing to guide its responses. When the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged, for example, some Democrats — worried that it would be 2020’s version of the Hillary Clinton email story — suggested that the Biden campaign should forcefully denounce it. But the campaign’s testing found that most voters in its key groups couldn’t follow the complexities of the allegations and that it wasn’t changing their opinion of Joe Biden. “The Hunter Biden conversation was many times larger than the Hillary Clinton email conversation, but it really didn’t stick because people think Joe Biden’s a good guy,” said Bleeker of Bully Pulpit Interactive. The campaign still responded to the reports, and Biden defended his son on the debate stage. But it stopped short of mounting a full-throated countermessaging campaign. When it did respond to misinformation, the Biden team tried to address the root of the narrative. After right-wing influencers posted compilation videos of Biden stumbling over his words and appearing forgetful, the campaign surveyed voters to try to figure out whether the attempt to paint him as mentally unfit was resonating. It discovered that the real concern for many people wasn’t Biden’s age or his health, per se, but whether he was an easily manipulated tool of the radical left. The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events. Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign’s focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign’s entire digital strategy — the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators — was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed. “It was about, how do we throw the incentives of the internet for a bit of a loop?” he said. “We made a decision early that we were going to be authentically Joe Biden online, even when people were saying that was a trap.”

How Joe Biden’s digital team tamed the MAGA internet

Over the past week, President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/were-winning-this-election-trump-at-first-post-poll-rally-347807" hreflang="en">'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally</a>

The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House</a>. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile, or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court.

And while he will leave office in 45 days, the last few weeks may only foreshadow what he will be like after he departs. Trump will almost certainly try to shape the national conversation from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his relentless campaign to discredit the election could undercut his successor, President-elect Joe Biden. Although many Republicans would like to move on, he appears intent on forcing them to remain in thrall to his need for vindication and vilification, even after his term expires.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-allies-take-pennsylvania-vote-complaint-to-us-supreme-court-347797" hreflang="en">Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court</a>

On Saturday night, Trump took his unreality show to Georgia for his first major public appearance since the Nov. 3 election. A rally to support two Republican senators in a runoff next month offered a high-profile opportunity to vent his grievances and promote his false claims that he was somehow cheated of a second term by a vast conspiracy.

“You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” he told supporters in a state that he lost by 12,000 votes, adding that he actually won other states where in fact he lost too. “They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” he declared as he pressured Republican state officials to overturn the results. “We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do.”

At times, Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/criminal-cruel-and-traitorous-donald-trump-belongs-in-prison-says-his-niece-mary-trump-347718" hreflang="en">'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump</a>

“This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.”

Unlike any of his modern predecessors, Trump has not called his victorious opponent, much less invited him to the White House for the traditional postelection visit. Trump has indicated that he may not attend Biden’s inauguration, which would make him the first sitting president since 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of the peaceful transfer of power.

He has been enabled by Republican leaders unwilling to stand up to him, even if many privately wish he would go away sooner rather than later. After being called “profiles in cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania on Friday disavowed their own election and called on Congress to reject the state’s electors for Biden. Only 27 of 249 Republican members of Congress surveyed by The Washington Post publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory. Trump condemned them Saturday as “RINOS,” meaning Republicans in name only.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-orders-a-near-total-withdrawal-of-us-troops-from-somalia-347606" hreflang="en">Trump orders a near total withdrawal of US troops from Somalia</a>

“He really has paid attention to the base,” said Christopher Ruddy, a friend of the president’s and chief executive of Newsmax, part of the conservative news media megaphone that has amplified Trump’s allegations. “They got him elected and, in his mind, got him elected the second time. And they’re strongly in favor of this recount effort and they want him to continue this. In his mind, he’s not just doing this for himself he’s doing it for his supporters and for the country. He’s on a mission, and he’s not going to be easily swayed.”

Trump’s Twitter feed is a fire hose of denial. “NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION,” he wrote at one point in recent days. “We won Michigan by a lot!” he wrote at another of a state he lost by more than 154,000 votes. He reposted a message seeking to delegitimize Biden: “If he is inaugurated under these circumstances, he cannot be considered ‘president’ but instead referred to as the #presidentialoccupant.”

And he has turned on his own party, angry that Republican leaders have refused to accept his baseless claims and overturn the will of the voters. Shortly before arriving in Georgia on Saturday, Trump called Gov. Brian Kemp to press him to convene a special legislative session to supplant the results there, then lashed out at the governor at the rally for rebuffing him. “Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. He also tweeted that Kemp and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, another Republican stalwart, “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.”

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tenants-sue-trump-over-scheme-that-drove-up-their-rents-347463" hreflang="en">Tenants sue Trump over scheme that drove up their rents</a>

But even as the president desperately demands that somebody, anybody, tell him that he is right, no one in a position of authority has done so other than blood relatives, paid lawyers and partisan soul mates. The election has been certified and accepted not just by Democrats but also by key Republican governors, secretaries of state, election officials, city clerks, judges and even Trump administration officials.

After his own cybersecurity czar endorsed the integrity of the election, Trump fired him. Now that Attorney General William Barr has said he saw no fraud that would overturn the results, he may be next.

Trump’s video was so out of touch with the facts that both Facebook and Twitter appended warning notices lest viewers actually believe what the president of the United States was telling them. Which explains why the only topic other than the election to draw Trump’s interest over the last week was the annual defense bill that he vowed to veto because Congress did not strip a legal protection for big technology companies as he has demanded.

By contrast, he expressed little interest in the coronavirus now ravaging the country or the resulting economic devastation. Rather than “rounding the corner,” as Trump insisted once again Saturday night, the pandemic this past week began killing a record high of nearly 3,000 people in the United States every day, almost the equivalent of another Sept. 11 attack every 24 hours.

Trump made no comment on that in his Twitter rants, nor about the latest jobs report documenting the economic toll. His only four tweets mentioning the virus were about defending his own handling of it, including reposted messages asserting that “The president was RIGHT.”

With six weeks until he leaves office, Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath.

“If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

Over the past week, President Donald Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

Over the past week, President Donald Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong. Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News. Also read| 'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile, or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court. And while he will leave office in 45 days, the last few weeks may only foreshadow what he will be like after he departs. Trump will almost certainly try to shape the national conversation from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his relentless campaign to discredit the election could undercut his successor, President-elect Joe Biden. Although many Republicans would like to move on, he appears intent on forcing them to remain in thrall to his need for vindication and vilification, even after his term expires. Also read| Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court On Saturday night, Trump took his unreality show to Georgia for his first major public appearance since the Nov. 3 election. A rally to support two Republican senators in a runoff next month offered a high-profile opportunity to vent his grievances and promote his false claims that he was somehow cheated of a second term by a vast conspiracy. “You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” he told supporters in a state that he lost by 12,000 votes, adding that he actually won other states where in fact he lost too. “They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” he declared as he pressured Republican state officials to overturn the results. “We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do.” At times, Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate. Also read| 'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump “This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.” Unlike any of his modern predecessors, Trump has not called his victorious opponent, much less invited him to the White House for the traditional postelection visit. Trump has indicated that he may not attend Biden’s inauguration, which would make him the first sitting president since 1869 to refuse to participate in the most important ritual of the peaceful transfer of power. He has been enabled by Republican leaders unwilling to stand up to him, even if many privately wish he would go away sooner rather than later. After being called “profiles in cowardice” by an ally of the president, 75 Republican state legislators from Pennsylvania on Friday disavowed their own election and called on Congress to reject the state’s electors for Biden. Only 27 of 249 Republican members of Congress surveyed by The Washington Post publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory. Trump condemned them Saturday as “RINOS,” meaning Republicans in name only. Also read| Trump orders a near total withdrawal of US troops from Somalia “He really has paid attention to the base,” said Christopher Ruddy, a friend of the president’s and chief executive of Newsmax, part of the conservative news media megaphone that has amplified Trump’s allegations. “They got him elected and, in his mind, got him elected the second time. And they’re strongly in favor of this recount effort and they want him to continue this. In his mind, he’s not just doing this for himself he’s doing it for his supporters and for the country. He’s on a mission, and he’s not going to be easily swayed.” Trump’s Twitter feed is a fire hose of denial. “NO WAY WE LOST THIS ELECTION,” he wrote at one point in recent days. “We won Michigan by a lot!” he wrote at another of a state he lost by more than 154,000 votes. He reposted a message seeking to delegitimize Biden: “If he is inaugurated under these circumstances, he cannot be considered ‘president’ but instead referred to as the #presidentialoccupant.” And he has turned on his own party, angry that Republican leaders have refused to accept his baseless claims and overturn the will of the voters. Shortly before arriving in Georgia on Saturday, Trump called Gov. Brian Kemp to press him to convene a special legislative session to supplant the results there, then lashed out at the governor at the rally for rebuffing him. “Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. He also tweeted that Kemp and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, another Republican stalwart, “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.” Also read| Tenants sue Trump over scheme that drove up their rents But even as the president desperately demands that somebody, anybody, tell him that he is right, no one in a position of authority has done so other than blood relatives, paid lawyers and partisan soul mates. The election has been certified and accepted not just by Democrats but also by key Republican governors, secretaries of state, election officials, city clerks, judges and even Trump administration officials. After his own cybersecurity czar endorsed the integrity of the election, Trump fired him. Now that Attorney General William Barr has said he saw no fraud that would overturn the results, he may be next. Trump’s video was so out of touch with the facts that both Facebook and Twitter appended warning notices lest viewers actually believe what the president of the United States was telling them. Which explains why the only topic other than the election to draw Trump’s interest over the last week was the annual defense bill that he vowed to veto because Congress did not strip a legal protection for big technology companies as he has demanded. By contrast, he expressed little interest in the coronavirus now ravaging the country or the resulting economic devastation. Rather than “rounding the corner,” as Trump insisted once again Saturday night, the pandemic this past week began killing a record high of nearly 3,000 people in the United States every day, almost the equivalent of another Sept. 11 attack every 24 hours. Trump made no comment on that in his Twitter rants, nor about the latest jobs report documenting the economic toll. His only four tweets mentioning the virus were about defending his own handling of it, including reposted messages asserting that “The president was RIGHT.” With six weeks until he leaves office, Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath. “If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

Donald Trump’s final days of rage and denial

Outgoing US president Donald Trump launched into another tirade of baseless claims at his first post-poll rally on Saturday.

At a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, Trump said the November 3 presidential vote was stolen from him, adding he would still end up winning.

"We're winning this election," Trump said.

"It's rigged. It's a fixed deal," he said of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

Despite surging cases of Covid-19 nationwide, few masks could be seen at the rally and many in the crowd were not abiding by social-distancing measures.

Trump was campaigning in Georgia on behalf of two Republican Senate candidates facing a hugely important runoff on January 5. The runoff races will decide which party controls the US Senate, and Trump continued his fear-mongering about rival Democrats.

He was joined by first lady Melania Trump, who gave a short speech before the president's.

"The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, controls every single taxpayer dollar," he said.&nbsp;

"Very simply, you will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country."

Trump yet again made it clear he was neither ready to concede to Biden nor give up on his claims of fraud -- even though they have been dismissed by a long line of courts.

Biden won Georgia by just under 12,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win the Republican stronghold.

Outgoing US president Donald Trump launched into another tirade of baseless claims at his first post-poll rally on Saturday. At a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, Trump said the November 3 presidential vote was stolen from him, adding he would still end up winning.

Outgoing US president Donald Trump launched into another tirade of baseless claims at his first post-poll rally on Saturday. At a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, Trump said the November 3 presidential vote was stolen from him, adding he would still end up winning. "We're winning this election," Trump said. "It's rigged. It's a fixed deal," he said of President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Despite surging cases of Covid-19 nationwide, few masks could be seen at the rally and many in the crowd were not abiding by social-distancing measures. Trump was campaigning in Georgia on behalf of two Republican Senate candidates facing a hugely important runoff on January 5. The runoff races will decide which party controls the US Senate, and Trump continued his fear-mongering about rival Democrats. He was joined by first lady Melania Trump, who gave a short speech before the president's. "The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, controls every single taxpayer dollar," he said. "Very simply, you will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country." Trump yet again made it clear he was neither ready to concede to Biden nor give up on his claims of fraud -- even though they have been dismissed by a long line of courts. Biden won Georgia by just under 12,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win the Republican stronghold.

'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally

Pentagon on Sunday said that officials of its intelligence agencies will begin meeting members of US President-elect Joe Biden's transition team. Pentagon denied allegations that it was deliberately delaying commencement of the meetings. Washington Post has published a report on December 4 saying that Trump administration did not allow Biden's team to meet intelligence officials and US Defence Department "rejected" or "did not approve" requests for the meeting.

Pentagon released a statement and denied the allegations and said that it was fully cooperating with the President-elect's team.

“The accusation by anonymous sources that DoD has not been fulfilling its commitment to professionally assist any of the Agency Review Teams is demonstrably false and patently insulting,” said the statement.

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/were-winning-this-election-trump-at-first-post-poll-rally-347807">'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally</a>

Donald Trump is yet to concede defeat in US Presidential Election 2020. He has continued levelling baseless charges of election fraud without presenting any evidence. In spite of suffering legal setbacks in number of courts in the US, Trump has chosen to repeat his allegations.

Even at his first post-poll rally in Georgia on Sunday (Indian Time) Trump said that he was <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/were-winning-this-election-trump-at-first-post-poll-rally-347807">going to win the presidential election</a>.

"We're winning this election," Trump said.

"It's rigged. It's a fixed deal," he said of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

In the immediate aftermath of the election results when it was amply clear that Biden had won, there was reluctance from Trump administration to co-operate in the transition process. It is a norm for the ourgoing administration to co-operate with the President-elect and his team so that power transfer takes place smoothly. 
&nbsp;

Pentagon on Sunday said that officials of its intelligence agencies will begin meeting members of US President-elect Joe Biden's transition team. Pentagon denied allegations that it was deliberately delaying commencement of the meetings.

Pentagon on Sunday said that officials of its intelligence agencies will begin meeting members of US President-elect Joe Biden's transition team. Pentagon denied allegations that it was deliberately delaying commencement of the meetings. Washington Post has published a report on December 4 saying that Trump administration did not allow Biden's team to meet intelligence officials and US Defence Department "rejected" or "did not approve" requests for the meeting. Pentagon released a statement and denied the allegations and said that it was fully cooperating with the President-elect's team. “The accusation by anonymous sources that DoD has not been fulfilling its commitment to professionally assist any of the Agency Review Teams is demonstrably false and patently insulting,” said the statement. Also Read | 'We're winning this election': Trump at first post-poll rally Donald Trump is yet to concede defeat in US Presidential Election 2020. He has continued levelling baseless charges of election fraud without presenting any evidence. In spite of suffering legal setbacks in number of courts in the US, Trump has chosen to repeat his allegations. Even at his first post-poll rally in Georgia on Sunday (Indian Time) Trump said that he was going to win the presidential election. "We're winning this election," Trump said. "It's rigged. It's a fixed deal," he said of President-elect Joe Biden's victory. In the immediate aftermath of the election results when it was amply clear that Biden had won, there was reluctance from Trump administration to co-operate in the transition process. It is a norm for the ourgoing administration to co-operate with the President-elect and his team so that power transfer takes place smoothly.

Pentagon spy agencies to meet Biden team after facing accusations of non-cooperation

There have been few surprises this past month in how Donald Trump has dealt with the reality of his electoral defeat.

Anyone familiar with his career could have predicted that he would claim to have been cheated out of victory. Anyone watching how he wielded power (or, more often, didn’t) as president could have predicted that his efforts to challenge the election results would be embarrassing, ridiculous and dismissed with prejudice in court. And anyone watching how the Republican Party dealt with his ascent could have predicted that its leaders would mostly avoid directly rebuking him, relying instead on the inertial forces of American democracy, the conscientiousness of judges and local officialdom, and Trump’s own incompetence to turn back his final power grab.

So far, so predictable. But speaking as a cynical observer of the Trump era, one feature of November did crack my jaded shell a bit: not his behavior or the system’s response, but the sheer scale of the belief among conservatives that the election was really stolen, measured not just in polling data but in conversations and arguments, online and in person, with people I would not have expected to embrace it.

The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited.

But what has struck me, especially, is how the belief in a stolen election has spread among people I wouldn’t have thought of as particularly Trumpy or super-partisan, who aren’t cable news junkies or intensely online, who didn’t even seem that invested in the election before it happened.

Others have taken note of the same phenomenon: At National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that “friends who I did not know were political are sending me little snippets of allegations of voter fraud and manipulation.” At The American Mind, the pseudonymous Californian Peachy Keenan describes watching a passel of lukewarm Trump-supporter moms in her Catholic parish suddenly “get MAGAfied” by election conspiracy theories. (As a fraud believer herself, she thinks that’s a good thing.)

Drawn from my conversations in the past few weeks, here’s an attempt at a taxonomy of these unlikely seeming fraud believers.

The conspiracy-curious normie

I say “normie” to reflect the reality that being open to the possibility of conspiracies is itself extremely normal and commonplace. There is nothing unusual, statistically speaking, about believing that a Cold War-era deep state assassinated John F. Kennedy or that the government is concealing evidence of UFOs. Conspiracy theories are common among Democrats as well as Republicans: Witness the polling on Russia’s supposed tampering with vote totals in 2016 or George W. Bush’s supposed foreknowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; recall the voting-machine theory spun to explain John Kerry’s narrow defeat in 2004.

This means you don’t need a complex story about Facebook or Fox News to understand why a person who isn’t intensely political might nonetheless be open to the idea that an election settled by tens of thousands of votes in a few key states was actually fixed for the winner. That kind of openness is just human nature — and not the worst part of human nature, either, given that conspiracies and cover-ups exist (the military really has been hiding weird evidence of UFOs!) and even wrongheaded theories often partake of a reasonable skepticism about elite malfeasance, from the Gulf of Tonkin era to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

What’s happened in the past month with our open-minded normie, though, is that this openness has been validated by the president of the United States and his retainers in a way that other forms of conspiracy curiosity are not. There is a long-standing pattern in both political parties of gently encouraging conspiracizing. (The Diebold-stole-Ohio theories in 2004 were given oxygen by prominent congressional Democrats; MSNBC’s Russiagate coverage was not exactly cautious in the theories that it entertained.) But Trump is obviously different — higher-profile and more radical. He’s a president, not a cable TV host or a congressman, and he’s shouting allegations, any allegations, with no pussyfooting, hedging or deniability involved.

If you are biased against conspiracy theories, this shouting is ridiculous. If you’re somewhat open toward them, though, and somewhat right-of-center, it provides encouragement. It’s not that the curious normie listens to Trump and thinks that everything he says is true. It’s that Trump is providing validation for the belief that something might be true, that where there are so many claims of fraud a few might be accurate, that where there’s so much smoke there might be a blaze or two as well.

Of course there are also lots of pure Trump loyalists who trust his claims absolutely, and a certain number of QAnon-type fantasists who embrace any theory no matter how baroque. But the voter fraud narrative is pervasive on the right because you don’t have to be a loyalist or a fantasist to take something from Trump’s rants — not belief itself, but the permission to believe.

The outsider-intellectual

The next category of believer consists of extremely smart people whose self-identification is bound up in constantly questioning and doubting official forms of knowledge. Conservatism has always had plenty of this sort in its ranks, but the consolidated progressive orthodoxy in elite institutions means that more and more people come to conservative ideas because they seem like a secret knowledge, an account of the world that’s compelling and yet excluded from official discourse.

This, in turn, instills a perpetual suspicion about anything that seems to have too much of a liberal consensus defending it, especially any idea that gets mocked and laughed at more than it gets rebutted. And it creates a strong epistemological bias toward what you can only find out for yourself,&nbsp;as opposed to what Yale’s experts or Twitter’s warning labels or The New York Times might tell you.

In many cases the outsider-intellectual’s approach generates real insight. (Anonymous right-wing Twitter was way out ahead of the coronavirus threat, for instance, at a time when official liberalism was still fretting more about xenophobia than the virus itself.) But it also tends to recapitulate the closed-circle problems of the official knowledge it rejects.

Thus the outsider-intellectual type looks at the no-voter-fraud consensus and immediately goes out in search of cracks in the pillar of official truth, anomalies that official certainty elides. A lot of the supposed evidence of fraud that circulates online comes from these efforts — not from grifts or lies (though grifters and liars do pick them up) but from sincere analyses of election data, which inevitably turn up anomalies here and there, which confirm the searchers’ assumptions, which closes the circle and convinces them that the official narrative is false and voter fraud is real.

The recently radicalized

This final camp includes many of the people reading and circulating the outsider-intellectual analyses — people on the right whose perceptions of what liberal institutions and actors are capable of doing have been altered by the coronavirus era.

Many liberals have spent the Trump years worried about a kind of Reichstag Fire moment, a crisis that Trump might use as an excuse to consolidate authoritarianism. But a lot of conservatives experienced May and June of the COVID era as a mirror image of those anti-Trump fears — as a crisis that seemed to be deliberately exploited for revolutionary purposes by politicians and activists of the left.

Their story of the spring and early summer starts with our country’s leaders and experts calling for unprecedented sacrifice, with lockdowns and closures that disproportionately affected small businesses, churches and families with children — all conservative-coded groups and institutions — while liberal professionals on Zoom were in better shape and the great powers of Silicon Valley expanded their influence and wealth. Then, based on a single activist-amplified case of police brutality, the same experts and politicians suddenly abandoned restrictions for the sake of left-wing protests … which the official media pretended were peaceful even when they cut a violent swathe through American cities … which included a wave of iconoclasm against key symbols of American history … even as a new ideological vocabulary seemed to suddenly take over elite institutions … and dissenting figures were purged … and in the background the world’s elites loudly announced that they were seeking a “Great Reset,” a post-coronavirus new world order.

For the radicalized, all this felt stage-managed, prearranged — both as a further escalation in the establishment’s battle against Trump, a successor to the Robert Mueller investigation and the impeachment push, and as an attempt to use the weirdness of the COVID situation to consolidate radical power within elite institutions. Experiencing and interpreting the summer of 2020 this way primed people to expect further escalation in the fall: After all, if liberals exploited a pandemic to stage-manage an ideological revolution, why wouldn’t&nbsp;they exploit all the weird features of pandemic voting to stage-manage the election outcome?

No doubt some of my liberal readers will find this question too ridiculous to even merit an answer. You can’t argue someone out of a conspiracy theory,&nbsp;a common axiom goes, which means the only appropriate response to these ideas is condemnation and a kind of quarantine — to be achieved, presumably, through better Facebook algorithms, the comprehensive political defeat of the Republican Party and some sort of “have you no sense of decency, sir” courage from news anchors and political leaders whenever right-wing paranoia reemerges.

I don’t see any way that these efforts will work. (Certainly on the evidence of 2020, the Republican Party isn’t going anywhere, let alone about to be “burned to the ground” as some anti-Trumpers hoped.)

Of course the alternative — actually trying to argue with people in the camps I’ve just described — may not work either, especially given the curated virtual realities that the internet increasingly enables us all to inhabit. But I’ve been argued in and out of a few outré theories in my life. (Only the best outré theories, I assure you.) And if you accept that there’s more reasoning&nbsp;involved in conspiracy theorizing than official wisdom suggests, then once such theories achieve a certain prominence, there’s an obligation to actually make the case against them rather than just laugh them away.

My own attempts at argument have run as follows: To the conspiracy-curious Republican whose curiosity is validated by Trump’s allegations of fraud, I’ve suggested that the place to look for fire amid the smoke is in claims that the president’s lawyers are actually willing to advance in court, as opposed to in news conferences, semiofficial hearings and on Twitter. Those lawyers — especially now that it’s mostly just the Rudy Giuliani show — have every incentive to blow a fraud case wide open. If their &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; claims don’t actually allege fraud or they fall apart under scrutiny, then so should your assumption that the president’s blustering must have some real-world correlative.

To the outsider-intellectuals fascinated by anomalies in ballot counts or ballot return patterns, I’ve argued that anomalies indicating fraud would have to show up in the final vote totals — meaning some pattern of results in key swing state cities that differ starkly from the results in cities in less-contested states, or some turnout pattern in a swing state’s suburbs that looks weird relative to the suburbs in a deep-blue or deep-red state. But where claims for those kinds of anomalies have been offered, they’ve turned out to be false. So until a compelling example can be cited, anomalies in the counting process should be presumed to be error or randomness, not fraud.

Finally to the radicalized, I’ve tried to convey, based on my own knowledge of how liberal institutions work, that what looked stage-managed to outsiders in the May and June disturbances actually reflected organic upheaval and division, sincere anti-racism and disorganized Trump-phobia, a crisis in the mind of liberalism, a dose of religious revival, plus a chaotic revolt by city-dwellers against a lockdown experience that fell heavily on them. Hypocrisy and radicalism alike there was in plenty, but literally nobody was in charge, except sometimes for activists in the younger generation who sensed a professional opportunity, and any supposed “plan” or “reset” was just a hapless attempt by elder statesmen to get woke.

Put more succinctly: The liberal establishment that I watched stagger through May and June could not plan a sweeping voter-fraud conspiracy to save its life.

Have I persuaded anyone with these arguments? Maybe not, and as a columnist for a noted establishment organ, I’m probably not the best person to make them anyway. That distinction belongs to people more enmeshed in the conservative universe, scribes for National Review and talk radio hosts and conservative media critics, all of whom are the more important arguers for an intra-Republican debate.

I am certain that these issues are connected to a larger and more important question for the future of the right. At the moment, the voter-fraud narrative is being deployed, often by people more cynical than the groups I’ve just described, to help an outgoing president — one who twice lost the popular vote and displayed gross incompetence in the face of his administration’s greatest challenge — stake a permanent claim to the leadership of his party and establish himself as the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024.

And it’s being used to push aside the more compelling narrative that the Republican Party could take away from 2020, which is that Trump’s presidency demonstrated that populism can provide a foundation for conservatism, but to build on it the right needs a very different leader than the man Joe Biden just defeated.

That’s the most important argument for the next four years — and one I’ll be making firmly, passionately, right up until the Republican Party nominates Trump again in 2024.

There have been few surprises this past month in how Donald Trump has dealt with the reality of his electoral defeat. Anyone familiar with his career could have predicted that he would claim to have been cheated out of victory.

There have been few surprises this past month in how Donald Trump has dealt with the reality of his electoral defeat. Anyone familiar with his career could have predicted that he would claim to have been cheated out of victory. Anyone watching how he wielded power (or, more often, didn’t) as president could have predicted that his efforts to challenge the election results would be embarrassing, ridiculous and dismissed with prejudice in court. And anyone watching how the Republican Party dealt with his ascent could have predicted that its leaders would mostly avoid directly rebuking him, relying instead on the inertial forces of American democracy, the conscientiousness of judges and local officialdom, and Trump’s own incompetence to turn back his final power grab. So far, so predictable. But speaking as a cynical observer of the Trump era, one feature of November did crack my jaded shell a bit: not his behavior or the system’s response, but the sheer scale of the belief among conservatives that the election was really stolen, measured not just in polling data but in conversations and arguments, online and in person, with people I would not have expected to embrace it. The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited. But what has struck me, especially, is how the belief in a stolen election has spread among people I wouldn’t have thought of as particularly Trumpy or super-partisan, who aren’t cable news junkies or intensely online, who didn’t even seem that invested in the election before it happened. Others have taken note of the same phenomenon: At National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that “friends who I did not know were political are sending me little snippets of allegations of voter fraud and manipulation.” At The American Mind, the pseudonymous Californian Peachy Keenan describes watching a passel of lukewarm Trump-supporter moms in her Catholic parish suddenly “get MAGAfied” by election conspiracy theories. (As a fraud believer herself, she thinks that’s a good thing.) Drawn from my conversations in the past few weeks, here’s an attempt at a taxonomy of these unlikely seeming fraud believers. The conspiracy-curious normie I say “normie” to reflect the reality that being open to the possibility of conspiracies is itself extremely normal and commonplace. There is nothing unusual, statistically speaking, about believing that a Cold War-era deep state assassinated John F. Kennedy or that the government is concealing evidence of UFOs. Conspiracy theories are common among Democrats as well as Republicans: Witness the polling on Russia’s supposed tampering with vote totals in 2016 or George W. Bush’s supposed foreknowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; recall the voting-machine theory spun to explain John Kerry’s narrow defeat in 2004. This means you don’t need a complex story about Facebook or Fox News to understand why a person who isn’t intensely political might nonetheless be open to the idea that an election settled by tens of thousands of votes in a few key states was actually fixed for the winner. That kind of openness is just human nature — and not the worst part of human nature, either, given that conspiracies and cover-ups exist (the military really has been hiding weird evidence of UFOs!) and even wrongheaded theories often partake of a reasonable skepticism about elite malfeasance, from the Gulf of Tonkin era to the Jeffrey Epstein case. What’s happened in the past month with our open-minded normie, though, is that this openness has been validated by the president of the United States and his retainers in a way that other forms of conspiracy curiosity are not. There is a long-standing pattern in both political parties of gently encouraging conspiracizing. (The Diebold-stole-Ohio theories in 2004 were given oxygen by prominent congressional Democrats; MSNBC’s Russiagate coverage was not exactly cautious in the theories that it entertained.) But Trump is obviously different — higher-profile and more radical. He’s a president, not a cable TV host or a congressman, and he’s shouting allegations, any allegations, with no pussyfooting, hedging or deniability involved. If you are biased against conspiracy theories, this shouting is ridiculous. If you’re somewhat open toward them, though, and somewhat right-of-center, it provides encouragement. It’s not that the curious normie listens to Trump and thinks that everything he says is true. It’s that Trump is providing validation for the belief that something might be true, that where there are so many claims of fraud a few might be accurate, that where there’s so much smoke there might be a blaze or two as well. Of course there are also lots of pure Trump loyalists who trust his claims absolutely, and a certain number of QAnon-type fantasists who embrace any theory no matter how baroque. But the voter fraud narrative is pervasive on the right because you don’t have to be a loyalist or a fantasist to take something from Trump’s rants — not belief itself, but the permission to believe. The outsider-intellectual The next category of believer consists of extremely smart people whose self-identification is bound up in constantly questioning and doubting official forms of knowledge. Conservatism has always had plenty of this sort in its ranks, but the consolidated progressive orthodoxy in elite institutions means that more and more people come to conservative ideas because they seem like a secret knowledge, an account of the world that’s compelling and yet excluded from official discourse. This, in turn, instills a perpetual suspicion about anything that seems to have too much of a liberal consensus defending it, especially any idea that gets mocked and laughed at more than it gets rebutted. And it creates a strong epistemological bias toward what you can only find out for yourself, as opposed to what Yale’s experts or Twitter’s warning labels or The New York Times might tell you. In many cases the outsider-intellectual’s approach generates real insight. (Anonymous right-wing Twitter was way out ahead of the coronavirus threat, for instance, at a time when official liberalism was still fretting more about xenophobia than the virus itself.) But it also tends to recapitulate the closed-circle problems of the official knowledge it rejects. Thus the outsider-intellectual type looks at the no-voter-fraud consensus and immediately goes out in search of cracks in the pillar of official truth, anomalies that official certainty elides. A lot of the supposed evidence of fraud that circulates online comes from these efforts — not from grifts or lies (though grifters and liars do pick them up) but from sincere analyses of election data, which inevitably turn up anomalies here and there, which confirm the searchers’ assumptions, which closes the circle and convinces them that the official narrative is false and voter fraud is real. The recently radicalized This final camp includes many of the people reading and circulating the outsider-intellectual analyses — people on the right whose perceptions of what liberal institutions and actors are capable of doing have been altered by the coronavirus era. Many liberals have spent the Trump years worried about a kind of Reichstag Fire moment, a crisis that Trump might use as an excuse to consolidate authoritarianism. But a lot of conservatives experienced May and June of the COVID era as a mirror image of those anti-Trump fears — as a crisis that seemed to be deliberately exploited for revolutionary purposes by politicians and activists of the left. Their story of the spring and early summer starts with our country’s leaders and experts calling for unprecedented sacrifice, with lockdowns and closures that disproportionately affected small businesses, churches and families with children — all conservative-coded groups and institutions — while liberal professionals on Zoom were in better shape and the great powers of Silicon Valley expanded their influence and wealth. Then, based on a single activist-amplified case of police brutality, the same experts and politicians suddenly abandoned restrictions for the sake of left-wing protests … which the official media pretended were peaceful even when they cut a violent swathe through American cities … which included a wave of iconoclasm against key symbols of American history … even as a new ideological vocabulary seemed to suddenly take over elite institutions … and dissenting figures were purged … and in the background the world’s elites loudly announced that they were seeking a “Great Reset,” a post-coronavirus new world order. For the radicalized, all this felt stage-managed, prearranged — both as a further escalation in the establishment’s battle against Trump, a successor to the Robert Mueller investigation and the impeachment push, and as an attempt to use the weirdness of the COVID situation to consolidate radical power within elite institutions. Experiencing and interpreting the summer of 2020 this way primed people to expect further escalation in the fall: After all, if liberals exploited a pandemic to stage-manage an ideological revolution, why wouldn’t they exploit all the weird features of pandemic voting to stage-manage the election outcome? No doubt some of my liberal readers will find this question too ridiculous to even merit an answer. You can’t argue someone out of a conspiracy theory, a common axiom goes, which means the only appropriate response to these ideas is condemnation and a kind of quarantine — to be achieved, presumably, through better Facebook algorithms, the comprehensive political defeat of the Republican Party and some sort of “have you no sense of decency, sir” courage from news anchors and political leaders whenever right-wing paranoia reemerges. I don’t see any way that these efforts will work. (Certainly on the evidence of 2020, the Republican Party isn’t going anywhere, let alone about to be “burned to the ground” as some anti-Trumpers hoped.) Of course the alternative — actually trying to argue with people in the camps I’ve just described — may not work either, especially given the curated virtual realities that the internet increasingly enables us all to inhabit. But I’ve been argued in and out of a few outré theories in my life. (Only the best outré theories, I assure you.) And if you accept that there’s more reasoning involved in conspiracy theorizing than official wisdom suggests, then once such theories achieve a certain prominence, there’s an obligation to actually make the case against them rather than just laugh them away. My own attempts at argument have run as follows: To the conspiracy-curious Republican whose curiosity is validated by Trump’s allegations of fraud, I’ve suggested that the place to look for fire amid the smoke is in claims that the president’s lawyers are actually willing to advance in court, as opposed to in news conferences, semiofficial hearings and on Twitter. Those lawyers — especially now that it’s mostly just the Rudy Giuliani show — have every incentive to blow a fraud case wide open. If their legal claims don’t actually allege fraud or they fall apart under scrutiny, then so should your assumption that the president’s blustering must have some real-world correlative. To the outsider-intellectuals fascinated by anomalies in ballot counts or ballot return patterns, I’ve argued that anomalies indicating fraud would have to show up in the final vote totals — meaning some pattern of results in key swing state cities that differ starkly from the results in cities in less-contested states, or some turnout pattern in a swing state’s suburbs that looks weird relative to the suburbs in a deep-blue or deep-red state. But where claims for those kinds of anomalies have been offered, they’ve turned out to be false. So until a compelling example can be cited, anomalies in the counting process should be presumed to be error or randomness, not fraud. Finally to the radicalized, I’ve tried to convey, based on my own knowledge of how liberal institutions work, that what looked stage-managed to outsiders in the May and June disturbances actually reflected organic upheaval and division, sincere anti-racism and disorganized Trump-phobia, a crisis in the mind of liberalism, a dose of religious revival, plus a chaotic revolt by city-dwellers against a lockdown experience that fell heavily on them. Hypocrisy and radicalism alike there was in plenty, but literally nobody was in charge, except sometimes for activists in the younger generation who sensed a professional opportunity, and any supposed “plan” or “reset” was just a hapless attempt by elder statesmen to get woke. Put more succinctly: The liberal establishment that I watched stagger through May and June could not plan a sweeping voter-fraud conspiracy to save its life. Have I persuaded anyone with these arguments? Maybe not, and as a columnist for a noted establishment organ, I’m probably not the best person to make them anyway. That distinction belongs to people more enmeshed in the conservative universe, scribes for National Review and talk radio hosts and conservative media critics, all of whom are the more important arguers for an intra-Republican debate. I am certain that these issues are connected to a larger and more important question for the future of the right. At the moment, the voter-fraud narrative is being deployed, often by people more cynical than the groups I’ve just described, to help an outgoing president — one who twice lost the popular vote and displayed gross incompetence in the face of his administration’s greatest challenge — stake a permanent claim to the leadership of his party and establish himself as the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024. And it’s being used to push aside the more compelling narrative that the Republican Party could take away from 2020, which is that Trump’s presidency demonstrated that populism can provide a foundation for conservatism, but to build on it the right needs a very different leader than the man Joe Biden just defeated. That’s the most important argument for the next four years — and one I’ll be making firmly, passionately, right up until the Republican Party nominates Trump again in 2024.

Why do so many Americans think the election was stolen?

New residents: White House starts preparing for Joe Biden's inauguration

President Donald Trump is venturing out of Washington on Saturday for his first political appearance since his election defeat to Joe Biden, campaigning in Georgia where two run-off races will decide the fate of the US Senate.

The president takes the stage at 7:00 pm (0000 Sunday GMT) in the southern city of Valdosta, exactly one month before special January 5 elections.

It is just under a month since he was declared the loser in the presidential race.

Yet at a time when most defeated presidents would be working to burnish their legacy, Trump -- who has yet to concede to Biden -- has barely left the White House, sending out a stream of angry tweets challenging the result and demanding that Republicans nationwide defend him.

That includes the party in Georgia, which Biden won by a mere 12,000 votes.&nbsp;

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-allies-take-pennsylvania-vote-complaint-to-us-supreme-court-347797">Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court</a>

The stakes in the run-off elections there are sky-high. Former president Barack Obama laid them out at a virtual rally on Friday, saying that "the special election in Georgia is going to determine ultimately the course of the Biden presidency."

If Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeat Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the Senate will be evenly divided at 50-50, meaning Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would cast any deciding votes, as the Constitution dictates.

The race has drawn enormous attention, with donors nationwide pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and with figures as prominent as Obama, Vice President Mike Pence -- and now Trump himself -- scrambling to boost voter turnout.

Mixed messaging

But Trump has placed himself in a difficult spot. Since Biden won the November 3 election, the president has repeatedly, and baselessly, attacked the US electoral system as riddled with "fraud."

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/with-us-senate-majority-in-the-pot-parties-bring-out-big-guns-for-georgia-elections-347720">With US Senate majority in the pot, parties bring out big guns for Georgia elections</a>

Despite an overwhelming series of setbacks in the courts, the president and his lawyers have advanced wild conspiracy theories (one involving long-dead Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) to explain Biden's victory.&nbsp;

Now analysts say he might have created a political monster -- having undercut Georgia voters' faith in the election system just as he needs them to turn out on January 5.

A headline in the Valdosta Daily Times summed up the conflicted feeling among area voters: "Trump in Valdosta: S.Ga. excited, outraged by presidential visit."&nbsp;

Virus record set

Part of the "outrage" stems from the notion of yet another mass Trump rally coming on a day when the banner headline in the Atlanta Journal Constitution reads: "State sets single-day virus record."

Masks will be required and temperatures taken at the airport rally, local television channel WALB reported.&nbsp;

Trump's ability to excite his supporters remains powerful, and he thrives on the campaign rally setting.

But some voters even in long conservative Georgia are expressing weariness over the constant drama surrounding the president.

Analysts said it could make a crucial difference whether Trump, in Valdosta, merely repeats his litany of election grievances or instead addresses the importance of maintaining Senate control.

"It will be good for the rally if it's about Perdue and Kelley Loeffler and how we need to go vote," Spud Bowen, a Republican businessman from Tifton, Georgia, told the Valdosta Daily Times, "but I am certainly not in the mood to hear any more name-calling."&nbsp;

Thin line

Loeffler and Perdue have walked moved cautiously, urging Georgians to vote without directly challenging Trump's angry complaints.

Loeffler said she was "SO proud to have our President's support."

But Trump has not made things easier for Georgia Republicans, angrily attacking officials in his own party over his loss there, starting with Governor Brian Kemp.

"I'm ashamed that I endorsed him," Trump said of Kemp, furious that the governor did not denounce Republican secretary of state Brad Raffenspberger -- branded an "enemy of the state" by the president -- for certifying the election.&nbsp;

He tweeted against both men again on Saturday, hours before flying to Georgia, suggesting they were not true "Republicans."

It was unclear whether Kemp and Loeffler would attend the rally Saturday; a young Loeffler staff member and family friend of Kemp's, Harrison Deal, died in a car crash Friday.

For the 74-year-old Trump, who is considering a fresh White House run in 2024, the Georgia rally represents a gamble.

His performance there could boost his political chances, said conservative commentator Marc Thiessen.&nbsp;

But "if he lets Democrats take back the Senate because he was focused on rooting out some mythical communist conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, he will go down in ignominy," Thiessen wrote in The Washington Post.

President Donald Trump is venturing out of Washington on Saturday for his first political appearance since his election defeat to Joe Biden, campaigning in Georgia where two run-off races will decide the fate of the US Senate.

President Donald Trump is venturing out of Washington on Saturday for his first political appearance since his election defeat to Joe Biden, campaigning in Georgia where two run-off races will decide the fate of the US Senate. The president takes the stage at 7:00 pm (0000 Sunday GMT) in the southern city of Valdosta, exactly one month before special January 5 elections. It is just under a month since he was declared the loser in the presidential race. Yet at a time when most defeated presidents would be working to burnish their legacy, Trump -- who has yet to concede to Biden -- has barely left the White House, sending out a stream of angry tweets challenging the result and demanding that Republicans nationwide defend him. That includes the party in Georgia, which Biden won by a mere 12,000 votes. Also Read | Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court The stakes in the run-off elections there are sky-high. Former president Barack Obama laid them out at a virtual rally on Friday, saying that "the special election in Georgia is going to determine ultimately the course of the Biden presidency." If Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeat Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the Senate will be evenly divided at 50-50, meaning Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would cast any deciding votes, as the Constitution dictates. The race has drawn enormous attention, with donors nationwide pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and with figures as prominent as Obama, Vice President Mike Pence -- and now Trump himself -- scrambling to boost voter turnout. Mixed messaging But Trump has placed himself in a difficult spot. Since Biden won the November 3 election, the president has repeatedly, and baselessly, attacked the US electoral system as riddled with "fraud." Also Read | With US Senate majority in the pot, parties bring out big guns for Georgia elections Despite an overwhelming series of setbacks in the courts, the president and his lawyers have advanced wild conspiracy theories (one involving long-dead Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) to explain Biden's victory. Now analysts say he might have created a political monster -- having undercut Georgia voters' faith in the election system just as he needs them to turn out on January 5. A headline in the Valdosta Daily Times summed up the conflicted feeling among area voters: "Trump in Valdosta: S.Ga. excited, outraged by presidential visit." Virus record set Part of the "outrage" stems from the notion of yet another mass Trump rally coming on a day when the banner headline in the Atlanta Journal Constitution reads: "State sets single-day virus record." Masks will be required and temperatures taken at the airport rally, local television channel WALB reported. Trump's ability to excite his supporters remains powerful, and he thrives on the campaign rally setting. But some voters even in long conservative Georgia are expressing weariness over the constant drama surrounding the president. Analysts said it could make a crucial difference whether Trump, in Valdosta, merely repeats his litany of election grievances or instead addresses the importance of maintaining Senate control. "It will be good for the rally if it's about Perdue and Kelley Loeffler and how we need to go vote," Spud Bowen, a Republican businessman from Tifton, Georgia, told the Valdosta Daily Times, "but I am certainly not in the mood to hear any more name-calling." Thin line Loeffler and Perdue have walked moved cautiously, urging Georgians to vote without directly challenging Trump's angry complaints. Loeffler said she was "SO proud to have our President's support." But Trump has not made things easier for Georgia Republicans, angrily attacking officials in his own party over his loss there, starting with Governor Brian Kemp. "I'm ashamed that I endorsed him," Trump said of Kemp, furious that the governor did not denounce Republican secretary of state Brad Raffenspberger -- branded an "enemy of the state" by the president -- for certifying the election. He tweeted against both men again on Saturday, hours before flying to Georgia, suggesting they were not true "Republicans." It was unclear whether Kemp and Loeffler would attend the rally Saturday; a young Loeffler staff member and family friend of Kemp's, Harrison Deal, died in a car crash Friday. For the 74-year-old Trump, who is considering a fresh White House run in 2024, the Georgia rally represents a gamble. His performance there could boost his political chances, said conservative commentator Marc Thiessen. But "if he lets Democrats take back the Senate because he was focused on rooting out some mythical communist conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, he will go down in ignominy," Thiessen wrote in The Washington Post.

Trump to appear in Georgia in gamble over control of US Senate

Allies of President Donald Trump sought an emergency order Thursday from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden.

The move follows the Pennsylvania state supreme court's rejection Saturday of a suit challenging expanded mail-in voting in the key northeastern state.

In the motion filed Thursday the top US court is not asked to rule on the merits of the case at this point.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/strong-support-from-president-trump-saudi-arabia-says-final-agreement-with-qatar-within-reach-347759">'Strong support from President Trump': Saudi Arabia says final agreement with Qatar 'within reach'</a>

Rather, the plaintiffs ask the court for an injunction to halt any remaining steps in the election certification, which was actually done last week, so the plaintiffs can develop their arguments. They include Mike Kelly, a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

The court is expected to respond quickly in writing and is not obliged to explain whatever ruling it makes.

Trump is still refusing to concede defeat in the November 3 election, alleging without providing evidence that there was widespread fraud in both voting and vote counting and that the election was stolen from him.

The Trump campaign and Trump allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, seeking to overturn the results. In some 20-odd cases, however, the courts have rejected these suits.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/with-us-senate-majority-in-the-pot-parties-bring-out-big-guns-for-georgia-elections-347720">With US Senate majority in the pot, parties bring out big guns for Georgia elections</a>

On Tuesday Attorney General Bill Barr, a close ally of the president, broke with Trump and said there was no evidence of significant fraud to invalidate Biden's win.

Trump appointed three conservatives to the nine-member court during his presidency and said right after the November election he was prepared to go all the way to that tribunal to defend what he called his re-election victory.

In the 2000 presidential election, the high court halted a recount in Florida while George W. Bush held a 537-vote lead over Al Gore, handing Bush the presidency.

This time is different: There is not just one but several states that Trump is disputing and the margins of victory for Biden there are much larger than Bush's was.

The Supreme Court is considered unlikely to risk its reputation by getting involved in the Pennsylvania suit, which would not change the overall outcome of the election anyway.

Allies of President Donald Trump sought an emergency order Thursday from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden.

Allies of President Donald Trump sought an emergency order Thursday from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden. The move follows the Pennsylvania state supreme court's rejection Saturday of a suit challenging expanded mail-in voting in the key northeastern state. In the motion filed Thursday the top US court is not asked to rule on the merits of the case at this point. Also read| 'Strong support from President Trump': Saudi Arabia says final agreement with Qatar 'within reach' Rather, the plaintiffs ask the court for an injunction to halt any remaining steps in the election certification, which was actually done last week, so the plaintiffs can develop their arguments. They include Mike Kelly, a Republican member of the House of Representatives. The court is expected to respond quickly in writing and is not obliged to explain whatever ruling it makes. Trump is still refusing to concede defeat in the November 3 election, alleging without providing evidence that there was widespread fraud in both voting and vote counting and that the election was stolen from him. The Trump campaign and Trump allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, seeking to overturn the results. In some 20-odd cases, however, the courts have rejected these suits. Also read| With US Senate majority in the pot, parties bring out big guns for Georgia elections On Tuesday Attorney General Bill Barr, a close ally of the president, broke with Trump and said there was no evidence of significant fraud to invalidate Biden's win. Trump appointed three conservatives to the nine-member court during his presidency and said right after the November election he was prepared to go all the way to that tribunal to defend what he called his re-election victory. In the 2000 presidential election, the high court halted a recount in Florida while George W. Bush held a 537-vote lead over Al Gore, handing Bush the presidency. This time is different: There is not just one but several states that Trump is disputing and the margins of victory for Biden there are much larger than Bush's was. The Supreme Court is considered unlikely to risk its reputation by getting involved in the Pennsylvania suit, which would not change the overall outcome of the election anyway.

Donald Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-officially-clinches-electoral-college-win-as-california-certifies-347604">Biden officially clinches electoral college win as California certifies</a>

Joe Biden now officially has more than the 270 Electoral College votes -- which he needs to claim the US presidency -- after California certified its election results | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-officially-clinches-electoral-college-win-as-california-certifies-347604">READ MORE</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-plans-to-not-extend-tiktok-divestiture-deadline-347609">US plans to not extend TikTok divestiture deadline</a>

The Trump administration has opted to not grant ByteDance a new extension of an order requiring the Chinese company to divest TikTok's US assets | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-plans-to-not-extend-tiktok-divestiture-deadline-347609">READ MORE</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-judge-orders-trump-administration-to-restore-daca-347616">US judge orders Trump administration to restore DACA</a>

The Trump administration must accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme that protects young immigrants from deportation, a federal judge in the United States has ruled | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-judge-orders-trump-administration-to-restore-daca-347616">READ MORE</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-slaps-visa-restrictions-on-chinese-nationals-involved-in-crushing-dissent-347617">US slaps visa restrictions on Chinese nationals involved in crushing dissent</a>

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said that the country will impose visa restrictions on Chinese nationals who are engaged in overseas influence operations or have tried to silent dissent via threatening or any other coercive tactics | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-slaps-visa-restrictions-on-chinese-nationals-involved-in-crushing-dissent-347617">READ MORE</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/trudeau-reiterates-comments-on-farmer-protests-amid-diplomatic-row-with-india-347592">Trudeau reiterates comments on farmer protests amid diplomatic row with India</a>

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on Friday once again reiterated his stance on farmer protests in India amid worsening ties with New Delhi | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/trudeau-reiterates-comments-on-farmer-protests-amid-diplomatic-row-with-india-347592">READ MORE</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-house-passes-landmark-bill-to-decriminalise-marijuana-347607">US House passes landmark bill to decriminalise marijuana</a>

The US House of Representatives on Friday voted to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, days after the United Nations removed it from the list of world's most dangerous drugs | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-house-passes-landmark-bill-to-decriminalise-marijuana-347607">READ MORE</a>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/after-uk-bahrain-approves-pfizerbiontech-coronavirus-vaccine-347576">After UK, Bahrain approves Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine</a>

Bahrain said on Friday it has granted emergency use authorisation for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the second country after Britain to approve it | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/after-uk-bahrain-approves-pfizerbiontech-coronavirus-vaccine-347576">READ MORE</a>

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&nbsp;

Biden officially clinches electoral college win as California certifies Joe Biden now officially has more than the 270 Electoral College votes -- which he needs

Biden officially clinches electoral college win as California certifies Joe Biden now officially has more than the 270 Electoral College votes -- which he needs to claim the US presidency -- after California certified its election results | READ MORE US plans to not extend TikTok divestiture deadline The Trump administration has opted to not grant ByteDance a new extension of an order requiring the Chinese company to divest TikTok's US assets | READ MORE US judge orders Trump administration to restore DACA The Trump administration must accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme that protects young immigrants from deportation, a federal judge in the United States has ruled | READ MORE US slaps visa restrictions on Chinese nationals involved in crushing dissent US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said that the country will impose visa restrictions on Chinese nationals who are engaged in overseas influence operations or have tried to silent dissent via threatening or any other coercive tactics | READ MORE Trudeau reiterates comments on farmer protests amid diplomatic row with India Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on Friday once again reiterated his stance on farmer protests in India amid worsening ties with New Delhi | READ MORE US House passes landmark bill to decriminalise marijuana The US House of Representatives on Friday voted to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, days after the United Nations removed it from the list of world's most dangerous drugs | READ MORE After UK, Bahrain approves Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine Bahrain said on Friday it has granted emergency use authorisation for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the second country after Britain to approve it | READ MORE US sets new record of 225,000 Covid cases in one day The United States has registered a record number of coronavirus cases in 24 hours -- for the second day in a row, reaching 225,201 new infections | READ MORE Matthew Perry to release 'Friends'-inspired apparel line for charity Matthew Perry is all set to help the Corona-warriors as Chandler Bing | READ MORE

Morning news brief: With Biden inching towards inauguration, a lot is happening in US

The US congresswoman&nbsp;Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — commonly known as AOC — faced a lot of criticism for selling t-shorts and sweatshirts with the slogan "Tax the Rich"&nbsp;for $58. However, AOC has, once again, refused to let her critics troll her.

AOC, a&nbsp;New York Democrat, defended the price tag of her sweatshirts by stating that the garment costs this much as it is made in the US, and not in China like outgoing US President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>'s merchandise.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-feels-harry-styles-vogue-cover-has-james-dean-vibes-344838">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez feels Harry Styles' Vogue cover has 'James Dean vibes'</a>

"Republicans are freaking out bc we don’t use slave-wage labor for merch that funds grassroots organizing. But what’s the difference between Trump’s merch and ours? Ours is made in the US," she said on Twitter.

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Republicans are freaking out bc we don’t use slave-wage labor for merch that funds grassroots organizing. 
 
But what’s the difference between Trump’s merch and ours? 
 
Ours is made in the US. 🇺🇸 
 
(&amp; for GOP who joke that we shld give 👕 for free, we actually do - just volunteer 😉) <a href="https://t.co/35DnbFYQyC">https://t.co/35DnbFYQyC</a>
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href="https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334543240742260737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 3, 2020</a></blockquote>
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"Oh, and by the way: Tax the Rich," she added to her tweet.

The rebuttal came after TV show host Ben Shapiro took to Twitter to take a dig at AOC's sweatshirts by posting different t-shirt designs with 'student loan' strikes off painted on it and said, "For $27, you can buy AOC's bullshit t-shirt rather than spending it paying off loans you voluntarily took."

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For $27, you can buy AOC's bullshit t-shirt rather than spending it paying off loans you voluntarily took. <a href="https://t.co/dLEV3jkBc4">pic.twitter.com/dLEV3jkBc4</a>
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1334501113773568004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 3, 2020</a></blockquote>
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He also said the people who bought this 'idiotic' sweatshirt will be stuck with student loan and will be "bearing it alone, since you’ll still be paying down that student debt. You’ll just be $27 poorer and AOC’s war chest will be $27 richer."

Shapiro's show,&nbsp;The Daily Wire, too, took a hit at AOC's sweatshirt costs, and shared memes related to her sweatshirt ideas.

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A - always 
O - be 
C - capitalisming 
 
get it: <a href="https://t.co/UgXi04s8BB">https://t.co/UgXi04s8BB</a> <a href="https://t.co/9VXGjeWj5N">pic.twitter.com/9VXGjeWj5N</a>
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1334665650636091392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
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"Impress your friends no matter what protest is on trend!," Daily Wire team tweeted.&nbsp;

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Impress your friends no matter what protest is on trend! 
 
It’s less than AOC’s “tax the rich” sweatshirt too! <a href="https://t.co/UgXi04s8BB">https://t.co/UgXi04s8BB</a> <a href="https://t.co/JFYLg4dTRJ">pic.twitter.com/JFYLg4dTRJ</a>
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1334644129163177986?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 3, 2020</a></blockquote>
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This was not the first Shapiro slammed AOC for her comments and actions. A few days ago, when AOC claimed Republicans make fun of her for her old job — she served as a waitress in a local food joint — Shapiro shared&nbsp;experiences of his parents and alleged her of 'whining' about her job. "My dad worked as a pianist in a restaurant for 20 years. My mom worked as a waitress in college. The difference between them and you is that they don't make a career whining about it, or selling $60 sweatshirts to decry a capitalist system that allowed them to rise economically," he tweeted.

The US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — commonly known as AOC — faced a lot of criticism for selling t-shorts and sweatshirts with the slogan "Tax the Rich" for $58.

The US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — commonly known as AOC — faced a lot of criticism for selling t-shorts and sweatshirts with the slogan "Tax the Rich" for $58. However, AOC has, once again, refused to let her critics troll her. AOC, a New York Democrat, defended the price tag of her sweatshirts by stating that the garment costs this much as it is made in the US, and not in China like outgoing US President Donald Trump's merchandise. Also read| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez feels Harry Styles' Vogue cover has 'James Dean vibes' "Republicans are freaking out bc we don’t use slave-wage labor for merch that funds grassroots organizing. But what’s the difference between Trump’s merch and ours? Ours is made in the US," she said on Twitter. Republicans are freaking out bc we don’t use slave-wage labor for merch that funds grassroots organizing. But what’s the difference between Trump’s merch and ours? Ours is made in the US. 🇺🇸 (& for GOP who joke that we shld give 👕 for free, we actually do - just volunteer 😉) https://t.co/35DnbFYQyC — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 3, 2020 × "Oh, and by the way: Tax the Rich," she added to her tweet. The rebuttal came after TV show host Ben Shapiro took to Twitter to take a dig at AOC's sweatshirts by posting different t-shirt designs with 'student loan' strikes off painted on it and said, "For $27, you can buy AOC's bullshit t-shirt rather than spending it paying off loans you voluntarily took." For $27, you can buy AOC's bullshit t-shirt rather than spending it paying off loans you voluntarily took. pic.twitter.com/dLEV3jkBc4 — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 3, 2020 × He also said the people who bought this 'idiotic' sweatshirt will be stuck with student loan and will be "bearing it alone, since you’ll still be paying down that student debt. You’ll just be $27 poorer and AOC’s war chest will be $27 richer." Shapiro's show, The Daily Wire, too, took a hit at AOC's sweatshirt costs, and shared memes related to her sweatshirt ideas. A - always O - be C - capitalisming get it: https://t.co/UgXi04s8BB pic.twitter.com/9VXGjeWj5N — The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 4, 2020 × "Impress your friends no matter what protest is on trend!," Daily Wire team tweeted. Impress your friends no matter what protest is on trend! It’s less than AOC’s “tax the rich” sweatshirt too! https://t.co/UgXi04s8BB pic.twitter.com/JFYLg4dTRJ — The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 3, 2020 × This was not the first Shapiro slammed AOC for her comments and actions. A few days ago, when AOC claimed Republicans make fun of her for her old job — she served as a waitress in a local food joint — Shapiro shared experiences of his parents and alleged her of 'whining' about her job. "My dad worked as a pianist in a restaurant for 20 years. My mom worked as a waitress in college. The difference between them and you is that they don't make a career whining about it, or selling $60 sweatshirts to decry a capitalist system that allowed them to rise economically," he tweeted.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends 'Tax the Rich' sweatshirts worth $58

The Trump administration must accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme that protects young immigrants from deportation, a federal judge in the United States has ruled.

US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis asked the Trump administration Friday to fully reinstate the programme that protects from deportation immigrants who came to the country illegally as children. He added the government had to post a public notice within three days that new DACA applications were being accepted.

The ruling follows one from November where Garaufis said Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was unlawfully in his position.

As part of his crackdown on all kinds of immigration, Trump moved to end the program in 2017, calling it unconstitutional. The case ended up in the US Supreme Court, which ruled in June that the Trump administration had not followed proper administrative procedures to end the policy.

But in response, the Department of Homeland Security reinstated it only partially. It limited DACA to those already enrolled, rather than allow new applicants as well. And it cut the length of DACA permit renewals to one year, rather than the two years the program had allowed.

On Friday, the judge said that invalidated the memo Wolf had issued in July suspending DACA for new applications and reducing how long renewals were valid from two years down to one year.

Garaufis said Homeland Security must announce the full reinstatement of DACA on its website by Monday.

More than 300,000 new applicants could now be eligible for DACA, the Center for American Progress think tank said.

President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to restore DACA when he takes office in January.

The Trump administration must accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme that protects young immigrants from deportation, a federal judge in the United States has ruled.

The Trump administration must accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme that protects young immigrants from deportation, a federal judge in the United States has ruled. US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis asked the Trump administration Friday to fully reinstate the programme that protects from deportation immigrants who came to the country illegally as children. He added the government had to post a public notice within three days that new DACA applications were being accepted. The ruling follows one from November where Garaufis said Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was unlawfully in his position. As part of his crackdown on all kinds of immigration, Trump moved to end the program in 2017, calling it unconstitutional. The case ended up in the US Supreme Court, which ruled in June that the Trump administration had not followed proper administrative procedures to end the policy. But in response, the Department of Homeland Security reinstated it only partially. It limited DACA to those already enrolled, rather than allow new applicants as well. And it cut the length of DACA permit renewals to one year, rather than the two years the program had allowed. On Friday, the judge said that invalidated the memo Wolf had issued in July suspending DACA for new applications and reducing how long renewals were valid from two years down to one year. Garaufis said Homeland Security must announce the full reinstatement of DACA on its website by Monday. More than 300,000 new applicants could now be eligible for DACA, the Center for American Progress think tank said. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to restore DACA when he takes office in January.

US judge orders Trump administration to restore DACA

U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Commissioner Stephen Hahn has said that it is realistic to expect that 20 million Americans could be vaccinated against Coronavirus by the end of this year. Hahn declined to give a specific timeline for vaccine approvals.

US FDA Chief: 20 mn to be vaccinated this year

The Trump administration has opted to not grant ByteDance a new extension of an order requiring the Chinese company to divest TikTok's US assets.

Talks between the company and government are, however, expected to continue over the short video-sharing app's fate, according to Reuters.

The government had previously issued a 15-day and 7-day extension of the initial 90-day deadline, which was November 12, in Trump's order.

Last week, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States granted TikTok parent ByteDance a one-week extension until Friday over the order to shed TikTok's US assets.&nbsp;

President Donald Trump's August order gave the Justice Department the power to enforce the divestiture order once the deadline expired, but it is unclear when or how the government may seek to compel divestiture.

Trump was said to have personally made the decision to not approve any additional extensions at a meeting of senior US officials, according to a person briefed on the meeting.&nbsp;

The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns as the personal data of US users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has over 100 million US users, denies the allegation.

Under pressure from the US government, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalise a deal with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok’s US assets into a new entity.

ByteDance made a new proposal aimed at addressing the US government’s concerns, Reuters reported last week. The US Treasury said last week the seven-day extension was granted to review the "revised submission."

In September, TikTok announced it had a preliminary deal for Walmart and Oracle to take stakes in a new company to oversee US operations. Trump said the deal had his "blessing."

The Trump administration has opted to not grant ByteDance a new extension of an order requiring the Chinese company to divest TikTok's US assets. Talks between the company and government are, however, expected to continue over the short video-sharing app's fate, according to Reuters.

The Trump administration has opted to not grant ByteDance a new extension of an order requiring the Chinese company to divest TikTok's US assets. Talks between the company and government are, however, expected to continue over the short video-sharing app's fate, according to Reuters. The government had previously issued a 15-day and 7-day extension of the initial 90-day deadline, which was November 12, in Trump's order. Last week, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States granted TikTok parent ByteDance a one-week extension until Friday over the order to shed TikTok's US assets. President Donald Trump's August order gave the Justice Department the power to enforce the divestiture order once the deadline expired, but it is unclear when or how the government may seek to compel divestiture. Trump was said to have personally made the decision to not approve any additional extensions at a meeting of senior US officials, according to a person briefed on the meeting. The Trump administration contends TikTok poses national security concerns as the personal data of US users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok, which has over 100 million US users, denies the allegation. Under pressure from the US government, ByteDance has been in talks for months to finalise a deal with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to shift TikTok’s US assets into a new entity. ByteDance made a new proposal aimed at addressing the US government’s concerns, Reuters reported last week. The US Treasury said last week the seven-day extension was granted to review the "revised submission." In September, TikTok announced it had a preliminary deal for Walmart and Oracle to take stakes in a new company to oversee US operations. Trump said the deal had his "blessing."

US plans to not extend TikTok divestiture deadline

The Pentagon has ordered the majority of US troops to leave Somalia on President Donald Trump's orders.

There are currently about 700 troops in the nation.

This move is in continuation with the post-election push by Trump to shrink US involvement in counterterrorism missions abroad. Trump's order follows the November 17 announcement that he will withdraw thousands more US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq by January 15, 2021.

On Friday evening, the Pentagon said in a short statement that "a majority" of US troops and assets in Somalia will be withdrawn in early 2021. It added the drawdown in Somalia does not mark the end of US counterterrorism efforts there.

"As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa. The remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighbouring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both US and partner forces to maintain pressure against violent extremist organisations operating in Somalia," it further said.

US troops in Somalia primarily train and advise local Somali forces as they battle al Qaeda's largest affiliate, Al-Shabaab.

The US military also carries out airstrikes against Al-Shabaab and the local ISIS affiliate in the country, killing a top Al-Shabaab leader in a targetted strike in September. 
&nbsp;

The Pentagon has ordered the majority of US troops to leave Somalia on President Donald Trump's orders. There are currently about 700 troops in the nation. This move is in continuation with the post-election push by Trump to shrink US involvement in counterterrorism missions abroad.

The Pentagon has ordered the majority of US troops to leave Somalia on President Donald Trump's orders. There are currently about 700 troops in the nation. This move is in continuation with the post-election push by Trump to shrink US involvement in counterterrorism missions abroad. Trump's order follows the November 17 announcement that he will withdraw thousands more US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq by January 15, 2021. On Friday evening, the Pentagon said in a short statement that "a majority" of US troops and assets in Somalia will be withdrawn in early 2021. It added the drawdown in Somalia does not mark the end of US counterterrorism efforts there. "As a result of this decision, some forces may be reassigned outside of East Africa. The remaining forces will be repositioned from Somalia into neighbouring countries in order to allow cross-border operations by both US and partner forces to maintain pressure against violent extremist organisations operating in Somalia," it further said. US troops in Somalia primarily train and advise local Somali forces as they battle al Qaeda's largest affiliate, Al-Shabaab. The US military also carries out airstrikes against Al-Shabaab and the local ISIS affiliate in the country, killing a top Al-Shabaab leader in a targetted strike in September.

Trump orders a near total withdrawal of US troops from Somalia

Joe Biden now officially has more than the 270 Electoral College votes -- which he needs to claim the US presidency -- after California certified its election results.

California certified its presidential election Friday evening and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Democrat Joe Biden.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla's formal approval of Biden's win in the state brought his tally of pledged electors so far to 279.

The electors will meet in their states on December 14 to cast their votes, which Congress will tally in a joint session on January 6.

Though it's been apparent for weeks that Biden won the presidential election, his accrual of more than 270 electors is the first step toward the White House.

Outgoing president Donald Trump continues to make unsubstantiated allegations of massive voter fraud. But his chances keep on narrowing as courts in several several states have rejected legal challenges brought by his campaign and supporters.

Courts in Nevada and Minnesota handed him two more losses on Friday, dismissing lawsuits seeking to decertify Biden’s victories in those states.

Notably lawmakers can still object to accepting the electors' votes, it would be almost impossible for Biden to be blocked at that point.

According to AP, Trump and his allies have also raised the far-fetched notion that Republican state legislatures in those states could appoint a rival set of electors pledged to Trump. But state Republican leaders have rejected that approach, and it would likely be futile in any case.&nbsp;

According to federal law, both chambers of Congress would need to vote to accept a competing slate of electors. If they don't, the electors appointed by the states' governors -- all pledged to Biden in these cases -- must be used.

This tactic has been tried -- a handful of congressional Democrats in 2000, 2004 and 2016 objected to officially making both George W. Bush and Trump president. But the numbers were not enough to block the two men from taking office.

(with inputs)

Joe Biden now officially has more than the 270 Electoral College votes -- which he needs to claim the US presidency -- after California certified its election results.

Joe Biden now officially has more than the 270 Electoral College votes -- which he needs to claim the US presidency -- after California certified its election results. California certified its presidential election Friday evening and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Democrat Joe Biden. Secretary of State Alex Padilla's formal approval of Biden's win in the state brought his tally of pledged electors so far to 279. The electors will meet in their states on December 14 to cast their votes, which Congress will tally in a joint session on January 6. Though it's been apparent for weeks that Biden won the presidential election, his accrual of more than 270 electors is the first step toward the White House. Outgoing president Donald Trump continues to make unsubstantiated allegations of massive voter fraud. But his chances keep on narrowing as courts in several several states have rejected legal challenges brought by his campaign and supporters. Courts in Nevada and Minnesota handed him two more losses on Friday, dismissing lawsuits seeking to decertify Biden’s victories in those states. Notably lawmakers can still object to accepting the electors' votes, it would be almost impossible for Biden to be blocked at that point. According to AP, Trump and his allies have also raised the far-fetched notion that Republican state legislatures in those states could appoint a rival set of electors pledged to Trump. But state Republican leaders have rejected that approach, and it would likely be futile in any case. According to federal law, both chambers of Congress would need to vote to accept a competing slate of electors. If they don't, the electors appointed by the states' governors -- all pledged to Biden in these cases -- must be used. This tactic has been tried -- a handful of congressional Democrats in 2000, 2004 and 2016 objected to officially making both George W. Bush and Trump president. But the numbers were not enough to block the two men from taking office. (with inputs)

Biden officially clinches electoral college win as California certifies

The outgoing US President&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;has made several enemies over the years, and sadly his own niece, Mary Trump, is one out of the people who think the former reality star deserves a place in the US prison.

Mary Trump has been an outspoken critic of her uncle and has repeatedly accused him of being egoistic, corrupt, racist and much more. Donald Trump, as expected, has always denied her allegations and has also resorted to <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-says-mary-trumps-book-is-a-lie-calls-it-stupid-and-vicious-314609">name calling</a>.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/donald-trump-will-never-want-to-lose-again-like-badly-mary-trump-343149">Donald Trump will never want to lose again like badly: Mary Trump</a>

This time, as the outgoing President is busy fighting tooth and nail to save his defeat by alleging voter fraud by President-elect <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;in the recently-conducted <a href="https://www.wionews.com/us-election">US elections</a>, Mary has openly criticised Trump for his pending legal cases and has claimed that her uncle deserves a place in the US prison.

Dismissing the theory of many, Mary said in an interview that Donald Trump needs to be tried and prosecuted by the US justice department, instead of telling the general public that putting the outgoing President on trial will bring a greater division in country's political environment. "It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on," she said.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trumps-sister-calls-him-cruel-in-audio-recorded-by-niece-says-report-322487">Trump's sister calls him 'cruel' in audio recorded by niece, says report</a>

"If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald,” she added. “(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is."

The comments were not answered by Donald Trump or his team on depth. His team has alleged Mary of spreading such statements simply to "sell her book". Mary Trump is the author of a tell-all book on the trump family, titled "Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man." Her book became a threat for the Trump family who walked an extra mile to make unsuccessful attempts to block the publishing and release of this book. However, the book was released in July 2020 — few months before Trump faced Biden in a race to the White House.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/as-donald-trump-bats-for-goya-nieces-tell-all-book-registers-record-sales-314123">As Donald Trump bats for Goya, niece's 'tell-all' book registers record sales</a>

"It's not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he's been allowed to be," she said. "Every transgression that's gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That's partially why we're going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can."

Her statements have come at a time when Donald Trump is facing one pending criminal investigation, corruption charges and tax invasion for his dealings related to the trump Organization, and many more such cases filed by different individuals and organisations.&nbsp;

"I think it would be a tragedy if Donald and everybody who’s enabled him and committed crimes with him is not held accountable," Mary Trump said. "It would make it impossible for this country to recover in the long term."

This is not the first time Mary has lashed out at Trump's personal behaviour and its effect on the country, After his defeat, she had claimed that while there are rumours of Trump returning back four years later, he would not do this to himself because he cannot take 'such a defeat'. "I think that was floated initially as a way to appease him and his ego, but he will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again," see had said.

The outgoing US President Donald Trump has made several enemies over the years, and sadly his own niece, Mary Trump, is one out of the people who think the former reality star deserves a place in the US prison.

The outgoing US President Donald Trump has made several enemies over the years, and sadly his own niece, Mary Trump, is one out of the people who think the former reality star deserves a place in the US prison. Mary Trump has been an outspoken critic of her uncle and has repeatedly accused him of being egoistic, corrupt, racist and much more. Donald Trump, as expected, has always denied her allegations and has also resorted to name calling. Also read| Donald Trump will never want to lose again like badly: Mary Trump This time, as the outgoing President is busy fighting tooth and nail to save his defeat by alleging voter fraud by President-elect Joe Biden in the recently-conducted US elections, Mary has openly criticised Trump for his pending legal cases and has claimed that her uncle deserves a place in the US prison. Dismissing the theory of many, Mary said in an interview that Donald Trump needs to be tried and prosecuted by the US justice department, instead of telling the general public that putting the outgoing President on trial will bring a greater division in country's political environment. "It’s quite frankly insulting to be told time after time that the American people can handle it and that we just need to move on," she said. Also read| Trump's sister calls him 'cruel' in audio recorded by niece, says report "If anybody deserves to be prosecuted and tried, it’s Donald,” she added. “(Otherwise) we just leave ourselves open to somebody who, believe it or not, is even worse than he is." The comments were not answered by Donald Trump or his team on depth. His team has alleged Mary of spreading such statements simply to "sell her book". Mary Trump is the author of a tell-all book on the trump family, titled "Too Much and Never Enough, How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man." Her book became a threat for the Trump family who walked an extra mile to make unsuccessful attempts to block the publishing and release of this book. However, the book was released in July 2020 — few months before Trump faced Biden in a race to the White House. Also read| As Donald Trump bats for Goya, niece's 'tell-all' book registers record sales "It's not simply that Donald is horrible and incompetent and cruel, it’s that he's been allowed to be," she said. "Every transgression that's gone on unpunished has been an opportunity for him to push the envelope even further. That's partially why we're going to see him smashing as much stuff on his way out the door as he can." Her statements have come at a time when Donald Trump is facing one pending criminal investigation, corruption charges and tax invasion for his dealings related to the trump Organization, and many more such cases filed by different individuals and organisations. "I think it would be a tragedy if Donald and everybody who’s enabled him and committed crimes with him is not held accountable," Mary Trump said. "It would make it impossible for this country to recover in the long term." This is not the first time Mary has lashed out at Trump's personal behaviour and its effect on the country, After his defeat, she had claimed that while there are rumours of Trump returning back four years later, he would not do this to himself because he cannot take 'such a defeat'. "I think that was floated initially as a way to appease him and his ego, but he will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again," see had said.

'Criminal, cruel and traitorous' Donald Trump belongs in prison, says his niece Mary Trump

ATLANTA — Some of the biggest names in national politics jumped into the fiercely contested runoffs for two Georgia Senate seats Friday, even as a second recount showed that Joe Biden had maintained his lead in the state and Republicans braced for a visit by President Donald Trump, who has railed against his loss there with baseless claims of fraud.

With Trump set to campaign for the two Republican incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence and former President Barack Obama held dueling events to underscore the vital stakes in the special elections: If both Republicans are defeated, control of the Senate will shift to Democrats just as Biden moves into the Oval Office.

Watch |&nbsp;

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Obama appeared virtually at a turn-out-the-vote event for Jon Ossoff, the Democrat facing Perdue, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Loeffler’s opponent, and spoke of his frustration in seeing his initiatives blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate when he was in office. “If the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are interested in obstruction and gridlock, rather than progress and helping people, they can block just about anything,” Obama said.

Pence — with Perdue and Loeffler by his side — received a COVID-19 briefing at the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and said later at a rally for the Republican candidates that “we’re going to save the Senate, and then we’re going to save America.”

A second recount of the presidential vote in Georgia has finished, according to the Secretary of State website, showing Biden ahead by about 12,000 votes with 100% of the counties reporting.

New campaign financial reports filed late Thursday showed a staggering influx of money into the state in the first days of runoffs that were expected to set spending records, with more than $300 million booked in television, radio and digital ads, according to data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Media buyers said the price of ads was soaring, especially for super PACs, to unseen heights.

The Senate races are playing out at a hyperpartisan moment in American politics that has led to a civil war among Georgia Republicans divided over whether to support Trump as he persists with false assertions that the election was stolen from him. In Georgia and elsewhere, the president’s lawyers remain engaged in a failing, last-minute effort to throw the election to Trump.

Even as he tweeted this week that he wanted “a big David and Kelly WIN,” Trump called Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor, “hapless” for failing to work to overturn the election results, while also criticizing Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. His sustained assault on Georgia’s voting system prompted an extraordinary rebuke this week from another high-ranking elections official, who warned of violent threats against poll workers and publicly pleaded with the president to cool down his conspiratorial rhetoric.

On Friday, state Sen. Elena Parent, a Democrat on the judiciary subcommittee, which met Thursday, said that she had been the target of violent, anonymous threats that appeared on a public internet chat room.

The president’s appearance in Valdosta, near the Florida border, on Saturday evening comes after a concerted campaign by his advisers and Republican lawmakers to convince him that his presence is vital to increasing turnout among his supporters. Initially reluctant, the president agreed to hold the rally after being told that victories by the Republican Senate candidates would help prove his contention that his own win in Georgia was stolen from him, according to aides familiar with the conversations.

But some Republicans in Georgia and Washington are fearful that Trump will go off-script and potentially attack Kemp or Raffensperger. Party officials also worry that the president’s claims of fraud could backfire, undermining turnout by convincing Republican voters that the special elections are rigged against them anyway.

L. Lin Wood, a lawyer and Republican supporter of Trump, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who has filed lawsuits on the president’s behalf, urged Georgians on Wednesday not to vote “unless your vote is secure.”

That same day, a number of prominent Georgia Republicans, including former Gov. Nathan Deal, signed an open letter in which they warned that “the debate surrounding the state’s electoral system has made some within our party consider whether voting in the coming runoff election matters.”

The leaders said that the party needed to focus on winning the two Senate seats or risk turning the Senate over to a Democratic Party that “wishes to fundamentally alter the fabric of our nation into something unrecognizable.”

Some senior Republicans in Washington are doing little to hide their concern about the damage that they believe Wood and Powell are inflicting.

“It’s encouraging the president is going down there to rally the troops, because I know there’s some inconsistent messages being sent to his base supporters,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

Chip Lake, a Georgia-based Republican strategist who most recently worked for Rep. Doug Collins — who unsuccessfully vied in November for Loeffler’s Senate seat — said Friday that Trump was facing “one of the biggest political speeches the president’s ever had to make, because the stakes are that high.”

“If we have any portion of our base that might decide to boycott this election for any reason whatsoever, then we might be handing over the Senate to Democratic control,” Lake said.

Although a hand-recount of the state’s 5 million votes reaffirmed that Biden had indeed won the Georgia election, Trump’s campaign demanded a second machine recount. Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta and is the state’s most populous, certified its results Friday. As of Friday evening, state election officials had not responded to queries about when they would officially announce the results of the recount or recertify Biden as the winner.

The urgency of the Senate races was reflected in the huge amounts of money pouring into the four campaigns in recent weeks: about $187 million just in online donations from Oct. 15 to Nov. 23, according to federal records from the donation-processing sites ActBlue and WinRed.

In that 40-day period, both Democratic challengers outraised their Republican opponents every day from online contributions and surpassed the previous Senate fundraising record for a full quarter. Warnock raised $63.3 million in online donations, and Ossoff raised $66.4 million.

In that time, the two Republicans raised $58.2 million.

But well-heeled Republicans have erased much of the Democrats’ financial advantage with giant donations to a super PAC that raised $70 million in less than three weeks from a who’s who of Republican megadonors, including Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone ($15 million) and Ken Griffin of Citadel ($12 million). Media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $1 million, as did his son, Lachlan, the chief executive of the Fox Corp.

Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, put $23 million of her own money into her campaign to get to the runoff, and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, has donated an additional $10 million to a pro-Loeffler super PAC.

Big contributions from Democratic donors are lagging the Republicans. The leading Senate Democratic super PAC raised a little more than $10 million in the 20 days after the general election, records show. The biggest donation — $2.5 million — came from the organization that Stacey Abrams created, Fair Fight, after her narrow loss in 2018 for the governor’s race.

As Abrams’ star power has increased, Fair Fight itself has emerged as a major magnet for Democratic giving, pulling in nearly $35 million in 40 days that ended Nov. 23. Abrams, widely credited with leading the Democratic renaissance in Georgia, also appeared in the virtual rally Friday for the two Democratic candidates.

“We won this election decisively, and, despite the number of recounts, it keeps giving us the same answer: that Georgia Democrats showed up, that Georgians showed up and that we decided that we wanted to move this nation in the right direction,” Abrams said.

Ossoff voiced a major theme that both Democratic candidates were seeking to exploit: allegations that Loeffler and Perdue benefited from questionable stock trades as they learned about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re running against, like, the Bonnie and Clyde of political corruption in America, who represent politicians who put themselves over the people,” he said. Perdue and Loeffler have denied any inappropriate financial dealings.

On Friday, Pence rallied on behalf of Loeffler and Perdue in Savannah, where he warned that Democrats would advance a liberal, big-government agenda if they were allowed to seize control of the Senate.

“If you don’t vote, they win,” Pence told the small but enthusiastic crowd at the Savannah airport. “If you don’t vote, there could be nothing to stop Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi from cutting our military, raising taxes and passing the agenda of the radical left.”

Pence was joined at the airport by Perdue but not Loeffler, who returned to Atlanta after a young man on her campaign staff was killed Friday afternoon in a traffic accident.

Before the rally, Pence attended the CDC briefing with the Republican candidates, saying the nation is facing a “challenging time” but also “a season of hope,” with the likely approval of the first coronavirus vaccine coming as soon as next week.

ATLANTA — Some of the biggest names in national politics jumped into the fiercely contested runoffs for two Georgia Senate seats Friday, even as a second recount showed that Joe Biden had maintained his lead in the state and Republicans braced for a visit by President Donald Trump, who has railed against his loss there with baseless claims of fraud.

ATLANTA — Some of the biggest names in national politics jumped into the fiercely contested runoffs for two Georgia Senate seats Friday, even as a second recount showed that Joe Biden had maintained his lead in the state and Republicans braced for a visit by President Donald Trump, who has railed against his loss there with baseless claims of fraud. With Trump set to campaign for the two Republican incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence and former President Barack Obama held dueling events to underscore the vital stakes in the special elections: If both Republicans are defeated, control of the Senate will shift to Democrats just as Biden moves into the Oval Office. Watch | Obama appeared virtually at a turn-out-the-vote event for Jon Ossoff, the Democrat facing Perdue, and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, Loeffler’s opponent, and spoke of his frustration in seeing his initiatives blocked by the Republican-controlled Senate when he was in office. “If the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are interested in obstruction and gridlock, rather than progress and helping people, they can block just about anything,” Obama said. Pence — with Perdue and Loeffler by his side — received a COVID-19 briefing at the Atlanta headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and said later at a rally for the Republican candidates that “we’re going to save the Senate, and then we’re going to save America.” A second recount of the presidential vote in Georgia has finished, according to the Secretary of State website, showing Biden ahead by about 12,000 votes with 100% of the counties reporting. New campaign financial reports filed late Thursday showed a staggering influx of money into the state in the first days of runoffs that were expected to set spending records, with more than $300 million booked in television, radio and digital ads, according to data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Media buyers said the price of ads was soaring, especially for super PACs, to unseen heights. The Senate races are playing out at a hyperpartisan moment in American politics that has led to a civil war among Georgia Republicans divided over whether to support Trump as he persists with false assertions that the election was stolen from him. In Georgia and elsewhere, the president’s lawyers remain engaged in a failing, last-minute effort to throw the election to Trump. Even as he tweeted this week that he wanted “a big David and Kelly WIN,” Trump called Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor, “hapless” for failing to work to overturn the election results, while also criticizing Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. His sustained assault on Georgia’s voting system prompted an extraordinary rebuke this week from another high-ranking elections official, who warned of violent threats against poll workers and publicly pleaded with the president to cool down his conspiratorial rhetoric. On Friday, state Sen. Elena Parent, a Democrat on the judiciary subcommittee, which met Thursday, said that she had been the target of violent, anonymous threats that appeared on a public internet chat room. The president’s appearance in Valdosta, near the Florida border, on Saturday evening comes after a concerted campaign by his advisers and Republican lawmakers to convince him that his presence is vital to increasing turnout among his supporters. Initially reluctant, the president agreed to hold the rally after being told that victories by the Republican Senate candidates would help prove his contention that his own win in Georgia was stolen from him, according to aides familiar with the conversations. But some Republicans in Georgia and Washington are fearful that Trump will go off-script and potentially attack Kemp or Raffensperger. Party officials also worry that the president’s claims of fraud could backfire, undermining turnout by convincing Republican voters that the special elections are rigged against them anyway. L. Lin Wood, a lawyer and Republican supporter of Trump, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who has filed lawsuits on the president’s behalf, urged Georgians on Wednesday not to vote “unless your vote is secure.” That same day, a number of prominent Georgia Republicans, including former Gov. Nathan Deal, signed an open letter in which they warned that “the debate surrounding the state’s electoral system has made some within our party consider whether voting in the coming runoff election matters.” The leaders said that the party needed to focus on winning the two Senate seats or risk turning the Senate over to a Democratic Party that “wishes to fundamentally alter the fabric of our nation into something unrecognizable.” Some senior Republicans in Washington are doing little to hide their concern about the damage that they believe Wood and Powell are inflicting. “It’s encouraging the president is going down there to rally the troops, because I know there’s some inconsistent messages being sent to his base supporters,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Chip Lake, a Georgia-based Republican strategist who most recently worked for Rep. Doug Collins — who unsuccessfully vied in November for Loeffler’s Senate seat — said Friday that Trump was facing “one of the biggest political speeches the president’s ever had to make, because the stakes are that high.” “If we have any portion of our base that might decide to boycott this election for any reason whatsoever, then we might be handing over the Senate to Democratic control,” Lake said. Although a hand-recount of the state’s 5 million votes reaffirmed that Biden had indeed won the Georgia election, Trump’s campaign demanded a second machine recount. Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta and is the state’s most populous, certified its results Friday. As of Friday evening, state election officials had not responded to queries about when they would officially announce the results of the recount or recertify Biden as the winner. The urgency of the Senate races was reflected in the huge amounts of money pouring into the four campaigns in recent weeks: about $187 million just in online donations from Oct. 15 to Nov. 23, according to federal records from the donation-processing sites ActBlue and WinRed. In that 40-day period, both Democratic challengers outraised their Republican opponents every day from online contributions and surpassed the previous Senate fundraising record for a full quarter. Warnock raised $63.3 million in online donations, and Ossoff raised $66.4 million. In that time, the two Republicans raised $58.2 million. But well-heeled Republicans have erased much of the Democrats’ financial advantage with giant donations to a super PAC that raised $70 million in less than three weeks from a who’s who of Republican megadonors, including Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone ($15 million) and Ken Griffin of Citadel ($12 million). Media mogul Rupert Murdoch gave $1 million, as did his son, Lachlan, the chief executive of the Fox Corp. Loeffler, one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, put $23 million of her own money into her campaign to get to the runoff, and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, has donated an additional $10 million to a pro-Loeffler super PAC. Big contributions from Democratic donors are lagging the Republicans. The leading Senate Democratic super PAC raised a little more than $10 million in the 20 days after the general election, records show. The biggest donation — $2.5 million — came from the organization that Stacey Abrams created, Fair Fight, after her narrow loss in 2018 for the governor’s race. As Abrams’ star power has increased, Fair Fight itself has emerged as a major magnet for Democratic giving, pulling in nearly $35 million in 40 days that ended Nov. 23. Abrams, widely credited with leading the Democratic renaissance in Georgia, also appeared in the virtual rally Friday for the two Democratic candidates. “We won this election decisively, and, despite the number of recounts, it keeps giving us the same answer: that Georgia Democrats showed up, that Georgians showed up and that we decided that we wanted to move this nation in the right direction,” Abrams said. Ossoff voiced a major theme that both Democratic candidates were seeking to exploit: allegations that Loeffler and Perdue benefited from questionable stock trades as they learned about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re running against, like, the Bonnie and Clyde of political corruption in America, who represent politicians who put themselves over the people,” he said. Perdue and Loeffler have denied any inappropriate financial dealings. On Friday, Pence rallied on behalf of Loeffler and Perdue in Savannah, where he warned that Democrats would advance a liberal, big-government agenda if they were allowed to seize control of the Senate. “If you don’t vote, they win,” Pence told the small but enthusiastic crowd at the Savannah airport. “If you don’t vote, there could be nothing to stop Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi from cutting our military, raising taxes and passing the agenda of the radical left.” Pence was joined at the airport by Perdue but not Loeffler, who returned to Atlanta after a young man on her campaign staff was killed Friday afternoon in a traffic accident. Before the rally, Pence attended the CDC briefing with the Republican candidates, saying the nation is facing a “challenging time” but also “a season of hope,” with the likely approval of the first coronavirus vaccine coming as soon as next week.

A gathering political storm hits Georgia, with Trump on the way

US President Donald Trump declined to say if he still had confidence in US Attorney General William Barr after the Department of Justice chief this week said there was no sign of major fraud in last month's presidential election.

Barr told the Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday the department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, said Barr had not searched for any evidence.

"Well he hasn't done anything. So, he hasn't looked," Trump said in the Oval Office. "They haven't looked very hard, which is a disappointment to be honest with you, because it's massive fraud."

Asked if he still had confidence in Barr, Trump said: "Ask me that in a number of weeks from now. They should be looking at all of this fraud. This is not civil, he thought it was civil. This is not civil, this is criminal stuff. This is very bad criminal stuff."

Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden but has refused to concede and is fighting to overturn the results in court. He has continued to say without evidence that the election was marred by widespread fraud, claims that have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials.

Trump's legal team has accused Barr of failing to conduct a proper inquiry or audit voting machines, a task that does not fall to the Justice Department during an election.

Barr told the AP there had been confusion over the department's role in US elections, and that civil lawsuits like those being pursued by Trump's campaign were the appropriate legal venue.

A source familiar with the internal dynamics at the White House said Trump has been irked at Barr and talked about whether to replace him. The president's term ends in January.

Barr has long been a staunch Trump ally, winning scorn from Democrats and many of the department's own career prosecutors who have accused him of putting Trump's personal interests ahead of the country's interests.

US President Donald Trump declined to say if he still had confidence in US Attorney General William Barr after the Department of Justice chief this week said there was no sign of major fraud in last month's presidential election.

US President Donald Trump declined to say if he still had confidence in US Attorney General William Barr after the Department of Justice chief this week said there was no sign of major fraud in last month's presidential election. Barr told the Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday the department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, said Barr had not searched for any evidence. "Well he hasn't done anything. So, he hasn't looked," Trump said in the Oval Office. "They haven't looked very hard, which is a disappointment to be honest with you, because it's massive fraud." Asked if he still had confidence in Barr, Trump said: "Ask me that in a number of weeks from now. They should be looking at all of this fraud. This is not civil, he thought it was civil. This is not civil, this is criminal stuff. This is very bad criminal stuff." Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden but has refused to concede and is fighting to overturn the results in court. He has continued to say without evidence that the election was marred by widespread fraud, claims that have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal officials. Trump's legal team has accused Barr of failing to conduct a proper inquiry or audit voting machines, a task that does not fall to the Justice Department during an election. Barr told the AP there had been confusion over the department's role in US elections, and that civil lawsuits like those being pursued by Trump's campaign were the appropriate legal venue. A source familiar with the internal dynamics at the White House said Trump has been irked at Barr and talked about whether to replace him. The president's term ends in January. Barr has long been a staunch Trump ally, winning scorn from Democrats and many of the department's own career prosecutors who have accused him of putting Trump's personal interests ahead of the country's interests.

Trump dodges question on his trust on Attorney General Barr

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah has resigned from her post after serving over three years in the Donald Trump administration.

Farah's resignation was announced on Thursday, less than 50 days before the President-elect Joe Biden's administration is set to take over after winning the November 3 polls.

"It's been the honour of a lifetime to serve in the Trump Administration over the last three and a half years," Farah said in a statement after submitting her resignation.

Friday is her last day in the White House.

"We delivered historic tax cuts, putting money back in the pockets of hard working Americans. We've built the judiciary w/Constitution-abiding jurists &amp; we worked to create the most inclusive economy in American history - that gives every citizen a chance at the American dream," she added.

Farah said that she is deeply proud of the incredible things that the Trump Administration was able to accomplish to make the country stronger, safer, and more secure.

"The ISIS caliphate was destroyed, American hostages were returned, NATO is strong, we've brokered historic Mid East peace deals, and I was on the ground in Kabul for the announcement of a historic peace deal between the Afghan Government &amp; Taliban aimed at ending America's longest war," Farah said.

Democratic leader Biden has defeated incumbent president Trump, a Republican, in the November 3 presidential election. However, Trump has not conceded and has sought legal recourse in challenging the results.

Before becoming the White House Communications Director, Farah served as the Press Secretary to Vice President and Press Secretary to the Defence Secretary.

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah has resigned from her post after serving over three years in the Donald Trump administration. Farah's resignation was announced on Thursday, less than 50 days before the President-elect Joe Biden's administration is set to take over after winning the November 3 polls.

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah has resigned from her post after serving over three years in the Donald Trump administration. Farah's resignation was announced on Thursday, less than 50 days before the President-elect Joe Biden's administration is set to take over after winning the November 3 polls. "It's been the honour of a lifetime to serve in the Trump Administration over the last three and a half years," Farah said in a statement after submitting her resignation. Friday is her last day in the White House. "We delivered historic tax cuts, putting money back in the pockets of hard working Americans. We've built the judiciary w/Constitution-abiding jurists & we worked to create the most inclusive economy in American history - that gives every citizen a chance at the American dream," she added. Farah said that she is deeply proud of the incredible things that the Trump Administration was able to accomplish to make the country stronger, safer, and more secure. "The ISIS caliphate was destroyed, American hostages were returned, NATO is strong, we've brokered historic Mid East peace deals, and I was on the ground in Kabul for the announcement of a historic peace deal between the Afghan Government & Taliban aimed at ending America's longest war," Farah said. Democratic leader Biden has defeated incumbent president Trump, a Republican, in the November 3 presidential election. However, Trump has not conceded and has sought legal recourse in challenging the results. Before becoming the White House Communications Director, Farah served as the Press Secretary to Vice President and Press Secretary to the Defence Secretary.

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah resigns

Allies of US President Donald Trump have sought an emergency order from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden.

The move follows the Pennsylvania state supreme court's rejection of a suit challenging expanded mail-in voting in the key northeastern state.

In the motion filed Thursday the top US court is not asked to rule on the merits of the case at this point.

Rather, the plaintiffs ask the court for an injunction to halt any remaining steps in the election certification, which was actually done last week, so the plaintiffs can develop their arguments. They include Mike Kelly, a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

The court is expected to respond quickly in writing and is not obliged to explain whatever ruling it makes.

Trump is still refusing to concede defeat in the November 3 election, alleging without providing evidence that there was widespread fraud in both voting and vote counting, and that the election was stolen from him.

The Trump campaign and Trump allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, seeking to overturn the results. In some 20-odd cases, however, the courts have rejected these suits.

On Tuesday Attorney General Bill Barr, a close ally of the president, broke with Trump and said there was no evidence of significant fraud to invalidate Biden's win.

Trump appointed three conservatives to the nine-member court during his presidency and said right after the November election he was prepared to go all the way to that tribunal to defend what he called his re-election victory.

The Supreme Court is considered unlikely to risk its reputation by getting involved in the Pennsylvania suit, which would not change the overall outcome of the election anyway.

Allies of US President Donald Trump have sought an emergency order from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden.

Allies of US President Donald Trump have sought an emergency order from the US Supreme Court blocking the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, a key state won by President-elect Joe Biden. The move follows the Pennsylvania state supreme court's rejection of a suit challenging expanded mail-in voting in the key northeastern state. In the motion filed Thursday the top US court is not asked to rule on the merits of the case at this point. Rather, the plaintiffs ask the court for an injunction to halt any remaining steps in the election certification, which was actually done last week, so the plaintiffs can develop their arguments. They include Mike Kelly, a Republican member of the House of Representatives. The court is expected to respond quickly in writing and is not obliged to explain whatever ruling it makes. Trump is still refusing to concede defeat in the November 3 election, alleging without providing evidence that there was widespread fraud in both voting and vote counting, and that the election was stolen from him. The Trump campaign and Trump allies have filed a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states that he lost, seeking to overturn the results. In some 20-odd cases, however, the courts have rejected these suits. On Tuesday Attorney General Bill Barr, a close ally of the president, broke with Trump and said there was no evidence of significant fraud to invalidate Biden's win. Trump appointed three conservatives to the nine-member court during his presidency and said right after the November election he was prepared to go all the way to that tribunal to defend what he called his re-election victory. The Supreme Court is considered unlikely to risk its reputation by getting involved in the Pennsylvania suit, which would not change the overall outcome of the election anyway.

Trump allies take Pennsylvania vote complaint to US Supreme Court

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has refused to hear US President Donald Trump's lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state.

In addition, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the state's presidential election.

"Today I carried out my duty to certify the November 3rd election, and as required by state and federal law, I've signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris," Evers said in a statement.

Trump had asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state's two biggest Democratic counties, alleging irregularities in the way absentee ballots were administered.

In doing so, the top court has sidestepped a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruled that the case must first wind its way through lower courts.

The defeat on a 4-3 ruling was the latest in a string of losses for Trump's post-election lawsuits. Judges in multiple battleground states have rejected his claims of fraud or irregularities.&nbsp;

His lawsuit echoed claims that were earlier rejected by election officials in those counties during a recount that barely affected Biden's winning margin of about 20,700 votes.

Trump's attorney Jim Troupis said he would immediately file the case in circuit court and expected to be back before the Supreme Court very soon.

Trump had argued that there wasn't enough time to wage the legal battle by starting with a lower court, given the looming December 14 date when presidential electors cast their votes.

Trump's lawsuit challenged procedures that have been in place for years and never been found to be illegal. He claimed there were thousands of absentee ballots without a written application on file.

Trump also challenged absentee ballots where voters declared themselves to be indefinitely confined.&nbsp;

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in March ruled that it was up to individual voters to determine their status.

The court late Thursday also declined to hear a lawsuit brought by a Wisconsin resident, Dean Mueller, that argued that ballots placed in drop boxes are illegal and must not be counted.

(with inputs from agencies)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has refused to hear US President Donald Trump's lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has refused to hear US President Donald Trump's lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state. In addition, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has certified Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the state's presidential election. "Today I carried out my duty to certify the November 3rd election, and as required by state and federal law, I've signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris," Evers said in a statement. Trump had asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state's two biggest Democratic counties, alleging irregularities in the way absentee ballots were administered. In doing so, the top court has sidestepped a decision on the merits of the claims and instead ruled that the case must first wind its way through lower courts. The defeat on a 4-3 ruling was the latest in a string of losses for Trump's post-election lawsuits. Judges in multiple battleground states have rejected his claims of fraud or irregularities. His lawsuit echoed claims that were earlier rejected by election officials in those counties during a recount that barely affected Biden's winning margin of about 20,700 votes. Trump's attorney Jim Troupis said he would immediately file the case in circuit court and expected to be back before the Supreme Court very soon. Trump had argued that there wasn't enough time to wage the legal battle by starting with a lower court, given the looming December 14 date when presidential electors cast their votes. Trump's lawsuit challenged procedures that have been in place for years and never been found to be illegal. He claimed there were thousands of absentee ballots without a written application on file. Trump also challenged absentee ballots where voters declared themselves to be indefinitely confined. The Wisconsin Supreme Court in March ruled that it was up to individual voters to determine their status. The court late Thursday also declined to hear a lawsuit brought by a Wisconsin resident, Dean Mueller, that argued that ballots placed in drop boxes are illegal and must not be counted. (with inputs from agencies)

Wisconsin court declines to hear Trump election lawsuit; governor certifies Biden as winner

US&nbsp;President-elect&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe&nbsp;Biden</a>&nbsp;on Thursday said in an interview that his family’s dealings, including those of his son, Hunter will not conflict with his role as commander in chief, dismissing prior allegations of inappropriate business deals.

Biden, in an interview with CNN, said ''My son, my family, will not be involved in any business, any enterprise, that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict, with the appropriate distance from, the presidency and government.''

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-senate-report-reveals-joe-biden-son-hunters-links-with-chinese-ukrainian-firms-329865">US Senate report reveals Joe Biden son Hunter's links with Chinese, Ukrainian firms</a>

According to a US Senate Committee report,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-elections-2020-trump-applauds-selfs-approach-towards-covid-calls-bidens-approach-anti-science-329852">Joe Biden's</a>&nbsp;son Hunter was paid $50,000 a month to serve as the board of Burisma which is a Ukrainian natural gas company with a corrupt owner while his father was the US vice president&nbsp;during the Obama administration.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-hunter-bidens-business-links-with-china-330056/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

The report said the Treasury records accessed by Chairman Grassley and Chairman Johnson showed Hunter<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/us-election-2020-facebook-removes-fake-pages-created-in-china-targeting-trump-biden-329641">&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;</a>and his family including his associates were involved in "potential criminal activity relating to transactions with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals."

The Senate Committee report claimed that that Hunter Biden and his family were involved in a "vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe", while adding that Hunter and Archer formed "significant and consistent financial relationships with the corrupt oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky during their time working for Burisma and their firms made millions of dollars from that association while Joe Biden was the vice president."&nbsp;

Earlier, US President Donald Trump had made accusations that&nbsp;Hunter Biden engaged in unethical practices in Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the allegations, and Joe Biden has called them false and discredited.

However,&nbsp;Russian President Vladimir Putin had rejected Trump's criticism of Hunter and said that although he did ''make very good money in Ukraine'' but Moscow is not aware of anything criminal about his&nbsp;past business.

US President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday said in an interview that his family’s dealings, including those of his son, Hunter will not conflict with his role as commander in chief, dismissing prior allegations of inappropriate business deals.

US President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday said in an interview that his family’s dealings, including those of his son, Hunter will not conflict with his role as commander in chief, dismissing prior allegations of inappropriate business deals. Biden, in an interview with CNN, said ''My son, my family, will not be involved in any business, any enterprise, that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict, with the appropriate distance from, the presidency and government.'' Also read: US Senate report reveals Joe Biden son Hunter's links with Chinese, Ukrainian firms According to a US Senate Committee report, Joe Biden's son Hunter was paid $50,000 a month to serve as the board of Burisma which is a Ukrainian natural gas company with a corrupt owner while his father was the US vice president during the Obama administration. The report said the Treasury records accessed by Chairman Grassley and Chairman Johnson showed Hunter Biden and his family including his associates were involved in "potential criminal activity relating to transactions with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh and Chinese nationals." The Senate Committee report claimed that that Hunter Biden and his family were involved in a "vast financial network that connected them to foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe", while adding that Hunter and Archer formed "significant and consistent financial relationships with the corrupt oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky during their time working for Burisma and their firms made millions of dollars from that association while Joe Biden was the vice president." Earlier, US President Donald Trump had made accusations that Hunter Biden engaged in unethical practices in Ukraine. No evidence has been verified to support the allegations, and Joe Biden has called them false and discredited. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin had rejected Trump's criticism of Hunter and said that although he did ''make very good money in Ukraine'' but Moscow is not aware of anything criminal about his past business.

Joe Biden says his son Hunter’s business dealings will be kept away from presidency

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump will face a raft of potential legal challenges when he leaves office — from, among others, the Manhattan district attorney, the New York attorney general and perhaps the U.S. Justice Department.

Now add to that Leonie Green of the Westminster Apartments in Brooklyn.

Green is among a group of tenants in rent-regulated apartments once owned by Trump’s father who have filed a lawsuit against the president and his siblings, accusing the Trumps of a decadelong fraud to win artificially high rent increases through an invoice-padding scheme.

The scheme, first revealed in a 2018 investigation by The New York Times, involved tacking at least 20% onto the cost of materials purchased for the apartments, with Trump, his siblings and a cousin splitting the extra proceeds. The maneuver generated millions of dollars for each sibling, with no work required. While the siblings were still liable for income taxes, the maneuver allowed them to evade far-higher gift and estate taxes on part of the fortune they received from their father.

But the tenants paid a price. New York laws governing rent-regulated apartments allow owners to increase rents based on the costs of major capital improvements. The Trumps based their applications for rent hikes on the artificially increased invoices, so a boiler that actually cost $50,000 would generate a rent increase as if it had cost $60,000.

The new lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, seeks the extra rent paid, plus interest and triple damages, for current and former tenants in more than 30 apartment complexes that belonged to the president’s father, Fred C. Trump. The mostly austere red brick buildings — with names like Beach Haven, Shore Haven and Park Briar — are spread across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The invoice-padding scheme ran from 1992 until the Trumps sold their father’s buildings in 2004, but the artificially increased rents remained in place.

The lawsuit could pose a significant financial threat to Trump and his family. If the plaintiffs’ lawyers win approval of class-action status, any potential judgment would encompass every person who paid rent in more than 14,000 rent-regulated apartments since 1992.

Green, 54, said she had moved into the Westminster Apartments, in the Ditmas Park neighborhood, 22 years ago. Paying the rent on her salary as an executive assistant has been a struggle, she said, and she has fought off several eviction actions after falling behind. She was shocked to learn that her difficulties might have been made worse by a rich family “stealing from me.”

“You try so hard, and to hear something like this, it breaks my heart, because I believe they are just taking advantage of poor people,” Green said.

The lawsuit was filed just before midnight Oct. 2, moments before the expiration of the two-year statute of limitations for any fraud discovered through The Times’ 2018 investigation. An amended complaint was filed Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the Trump family described the lawsuit as “completely frivolous.”

“Not only are the allegations completely unsupported by any evidence, but they relate to events which go back nearly 30 years — yet were never once raised by anyone at any time only to be conveniently filed just one month before the 2020 presidential election,” the spokeswoman, Kimberly Benza, said in a statement.

Trump is already facing two New York investigations into his business activities and related tax issues — a criminal inquiry by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., and a civil one by the state attorney general, Letitia James.

At least two significant lawsuits also remain active. Writer E. Jean Carroll claims that Trump defamed her in denying that he had raped her. And a class-action lawsuit asserts Trump’s promotion of a company that promised people they could get rich selling video conference phones led them to lose money peddling an obsolete product.

Trump could also face charges in matters not fully resolved during his presidency, including whether he obstructed justice in the Russia investigation or violated campaign finance laws in directing his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make hush-money payments to two women who threatened to go public with their claims of past affairs with Trump.

Jerrold S. Parker, a founding partner of Parker Waichman, a national law firm based in Port Washington, New York, said his firm began considering a legal remedy for the tenants after the article in The Times. The firm sought tenants this year through television and internet advertisements. The amended complaint lists 20 plaintiffs.

“A massive fraud spanning 28 years, victimizing several hundred thousand tenants in Trump regulated apartments, needed to be addressed,” Parker said.

The tenants, he said, “must be made whole as a result of the money that was unlawfully and unknowingly taken from them by the Trump family for their own personal gain.”

In addition to the president, the defendants in the lawsuit are his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge, the estate of their brother Robert, who died this year, and the estate of John Walter, a favorite nephew and longtime employee of Fred Trump’s. Walter died in 2018.

The scheme began in 1992, after the Trumps realized that the family’s aging patriarch was sitting on mountains of cash that could face a 55% estate tax. Part of the solution came with the creation of a business they named All County Building Supply &amp;amp; Maintenance, which had no offices or employees and listed its address at Walter’s home on Long Island.

Little changed in how goods were purchased for the buildings. Fred Trump, who died in 1999, or one of his executives continued to negotiate prices, but for each purchase, Walter would generate an invoice showing that All County had bought the items, and a second invoice marked up 20-50% showing what All County had billed to Fred Trump’s properties. The siblings and Walter pocketed the difference.

Former prosecutors told The Times that filing padded invoices with state rent regulators could have led to criminal charges at the time, but that the statute of limitations had long since expired.

Trump’s federal income tax records for some of those years, which were revealed in an investigation published by The Times this September, show that he received $1.38 million from All County during the four years ending in 2003. Thanks to losses on his own endeavors, he paid federal income taxes in only one of those years, a total of $39,117 in 2003.

Barry filed a financial disclosure form for 1998 showing that she collected more than $1 million that year from All County. She retired last year as a federal appellate judge, ending an inquiry into complaints, spurred by The Times’ investigation, that she had violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax maneuvers, including the invoice-padding scheme.

The amended complaint filed this week notes that while Fred Trump’s empire was sold nearly two decades ago, the Trumps only dissolved All County shortly after the Times article was published in 2018.

One vendor from the All County years, Leon Eastmond, once told The Times that he was surprised when, after selling 60 boilers to Fred Trump, he opened his mail to find a $100,000 check from All County.

“I didn’t recognize the company,” Eastmond said. “I didn’t know who the hell they were.”

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump will face a raft of potential legal challenges when he leaves office — from, among others, the Manhattan district attorney, the New York attorney general and perhaps the U.

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump will face a raft of potential legal challenges when he leaves office — from, among others, the Manhattan district attorney, the New York attorney general and perhaps the U.S. Justice Department. Now add to that Leonie Green of the Westminster Apartments in Brooklyn. Green is among a group of tenants in rent-regulated apartments once owned by Trump’s father who have filed a lawsuit against the president and his siblings, accusing the Trumps of a decadelong fraud to win artificially high rent increases through an invoice-padding scheme. The scheme, first revealed in a 2018 investigation by The New York Times, involved tacking at least 20% onto the cost of materials purchased for the apartments, with Trump, his siblings and a cousin splitting the extra proceeds. The maneuver generated millions of dollars for each sibling, with no work required. While the siblings were still liable for income taxes, the maneuver allowed them to evade far-higher gift and estate taxes on part of the fortune they received from their father. But the tenants paid a price. New York laws governing rent-regulated apartments allow owners to increase rents based on the costs of major capital improvements. The Trumps based their applications for rent hikes on the artificially increased invoices, so a boiler that actually cost $50,000 would generate a rent increase as if it had cost $60,000. The new lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, seeks the extra rent paid, plus interest and triple damages, for current and former tenants in more than 30 apartment complexes that belonged to the president’s father, Fred C. Trump. The mostly austere red brick buildings — with names like Beach Haven, Shore Haven and Park Briar — are spread across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. The invoice-padding scheme ran from 1992 until the Trumps sold their father’s buildings in 2004, but the artificially increased rents remained in place. The lawsuit could pose a significant financial threat to Trump and his family. If the plaintiffs’ lawyers win approval of class-action status, any potential judgment would encompass every person who paid rent in more than 14,000 rent-regulated apartments since 1992. Green, 54, said she had moved into the Westminster Apartments, in the Ditmas Park neighborhood, 22 years ago. Paying the rent on her salary as an executive assistant has been a struggle, she said, and she has fought off several eviction actions after falling behind. She was shocked to learn that her difficulties might have been made worse by a rich family “stealing from me.” “You try so hard, and to hear something like this, it breaks my heart, because I believe they are just taking advantage of poor people,” Green said. The lawsuit was filed just before midnight Oct. 2, moments before the expiration of the two-year statute of limitations for any fraud discovered through The Times’ 2018 investigation. An amended complaint was filed Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Trump family described the lawsuit as “completely frivolous.” “Not only are the allegations completely unsupported by any evidence, but they relate to events which go back nearly 30 years — yet were never once raised by anyone at any time only to be conveniently filed just one month before the 2020 presidential election,” the spokeswoman, Kimberly Benza, said in a statement. Trump is already facing two New York investigations into his business activities and related tax issues — a criminal inquiry by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., and a civil one by the state attorney general, Letitia James. At least two significant lawsuits also remain active. Writer E. Jean Carroll claims that Trump defamed her in denying that he had raped her. And a class-action lawsuit asserts Trump’s promotion of a company that promised people they could get rich selling video conference phones led them to lose money peddling an obsolete product. Trump could also face charges in matters not fully resolved during his presidency, including whether he obstructed justice in the Russia investigation or violated campaign finance laws in directing his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make hush-money payments to two women who threatened to go public with their claims of past affairs with Trump. Jerrold S. Parker, a founding partner of Parker Waichman, a national law firm based in Port Washington, New York, said his firm began considering a legal remedy for the tenants after the article in The Times. The firm sought tenants this year through television and internet advertisements. The amended complaint lists 20 plaintiffs. “A massive fraud spanning 28 years, victimizing several hundred thousand tenants in Trump regulated apartments, needed to be addressed,” Parker said. The tenants, he said, “must be made whole as a result of the money that was unlawfully and unknowingly taken from them by the Trump family for their own personal gain.” In addition to the president, the defendants in the lawsuit are his sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge, the estate of their brother Robert, who died this year, and the estate of John Walter, a favorite nephew and longtime employee of Fred Trump’s. Walter died in 2018. The scheme began in 1992, after the Trumps realized that the family’s aging patriarch was sitting on mountains of cash that could face a 55% estate tax. Part of the solution came with the creation of a business they named All County Building Supply &amp; Maintenance, which had no offices or employees and listed its address at Walter’s home on Long Island. Little changed in how goods were purchased for the buildings. Fred Trump, who died in 1999, or one of his executives continued to negotiate prices, but for each purchase, Walter would generate an invoice showing that All County had bought the items, and a second invoice marked up 20-50% showing what All County had billed to Fred Trump’s properties. The siblings and Walter pocketed the difference. Former prosecutors told The Times that filing padded invoices with state rent regulators could have led to criminal charges at the time, but that the statute of limitations had long since expired. Trump’s federal income tax records for some of those years, which were revealed in an investigation published by The Times this September, show that he received $1.38 million from All County during the four years ending in 2003. Thanks to losses on his own endeavors, he paid federal income taxes in only one of those years, a total of $39,117 in 2003. Barry filed a financial disclosure form for 1998 showing that she collected more than $1 million that year from All County. She retired last year as a federal appellate judge, ending an inquiry into complaints, spurred by The Times’ investigation, that she had violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax maneuvers, including the invoice-padding scheme. The amended complaint filed this week notes that while Fred Trump’s empire was sold nearly two decades ago, the Trumps only dissolved All County shortly after the Times article was published in 2018. One vendor from the All County years, Leon Eastmond, once told The Times that he was surprised when, after selling 60 boilers to Fred Trump, he opened his mail to find a $100,000 check from All County. “I didn’t recognize the company,” Eastmond said. “I didn’t know who the hell they were.”

Tenants sue Trump over scheme that drove up their rents

Florida once again offered an electoral conundrum this year. Even as the state’s voters filled in the bubble for Donald Trump, they did the same for one of the policies that his opponent, Joe Biden, consistently championed on the campaign trail. They voted by more than 20 percentage points to add an amendment to the Florida Constitution raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

A higher wage, in other words, actually got more votes than either presidential candidate.

If you only listened to Republicans or cable news it would seem impossible, but it’s true: Americans, including many conservatives, agree on a number of fundamental progressive economic policies, even if they vehemently disagree on which party should carry them out. This isn’t just obvious in the polling; when these policies are put to voters directly, as many were on Election Day, voters consistently approve them.

And voters passed these Democratic priorities not just in deep blue places, but purple and red ones as well. It’s a pattern that’s played out many times before: Every time voters have weighed whether to expand Medicaid, a policy many Republican politicians oppose, they’ve approved it, including in deep red states like Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska and Utah.

Mr. Biden has a number of policies he could decide to champion once he takes office and many crises to resolve. But he would be smart to put the issues voters approved this election season — and which states and cities, our laboratories of democracy, have been experimenting with for years, proving they can actually work — at the top of his list.

Florida is not the only place with a new $15 minimum wage. Voters in (admittedly very liberal) Portland, Me., approved the same in November.

Many voters also said yes to higher taxes. In Arizona, a site of the Red for Ed teachers strikes in 2018 that demanded better funding for public education, a ballot measure to raise taxes on the wealthy to hire more teachers and school personnel and raise their pay was a winner. Voters in a few other places — the Portland, Ore. area; St. Louis; and statewide in Colorado — also approved increasing taxes to fund early childhood education.

The measure in Portland is particularly notable not just because it will eventually raise $202 million a year, but also because of what it spends the money on. All 3- and 4-year-olds in the county Portland is in will get free, full-day preschool while pre-K teacher pay will be raised to rival that of kindergarten teachers, making it one of the most robust programs in the country.

Coloradans also voted for a slight increase in payroll taxes to help fund a public paid family-leave program. State residents now have the honor of being the first in the country to approve paid family leave directly, after their lawmakers couldn’t manage to pass it for six years.

Higher taxes didn’t win the day everywhere. Colorado voters also approved a reduction in the income tax. In California, even as voters passed some criminal justice reform measures, they said no to an initiative to change commercial property taxes to raise more funding for the public school system.

But overall, this year’s ballot votes aren’t an anomaly. These are all consistently popular policies. A higher minimum wage has enjoyed nearly a quarter-century of going undefeated at the ballot box. Even a near doubling of the federal minimum garners strong support: two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of moderate Republicans, back a $15 minimum wage. Paid family leave is apparently a no-brainer, as more than 80 percent of voters support it, including strong majorities of Republicans.

Even higher taxes, which are supposedly anathema to the American way, fare well in public polls. Americans have long felt that the rich don’t pay enough in taxes, while over the last decade a majority has come around to using higher taxes to redistribute wealth. Promise to put those taxes to use for a specific and popular good, like early education, and you appear to win over even more people.

And yet the federal minimum wage has stayed stuck at $7.25 an hour for over a decade, the longest stretch we’ve ever gone without a raise. The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid family leave. We also devote a much smaller share of our gross domestic product to early education than virtually all other developed countries, while ours is a relatively low tax country.

The public often doesn’t connect policy preferences with politicians. Which party consistently champions a higher minimum wage? Mr. Biden’s. Which works against it and even has some members who have called for the current minimum to be abolished altogether? The other guys.

Mr. Biden also promised paid family leave and higher taxes on the rich to fund benefits for everyone else, positions that have become core Democratic Party planks in recent years. And yet Florida shows that Americans can favor these policies but not necessarily the candidates who promise to act on them.

The disconnect is partly the result of a lack of bold, clear action. Some voters may deliberately favor divided government; others may balk at the idea that Republicans could really oppose something like paid leave. But many more want better pay and benefits, yet don’t believe that Democrats will really deliver them.

Mr. Biden faces myriad devastating problems when he takes office, first among them an uncontrolled pandemic. But he would be smart to prioritize the things voters have just approved for some of his earliest actions. A higher minimum wage, paid family leave and taxing the wealthy to support early education are bread-and-butter policies that address the very real economic problems Americans have long faced and that are even more acute now.

Mr. Biden can get a jump start without Congress by requiring higher wages and paid family leave at federal contractors, increasing living standards for hundreds of thousands of Americans. But the rest of it will require cooperation from Congress. Should Democrats prevail in Georgia and control the Senate, these should be among the first items on their list, and even if they don’t, they shouldn’t just be dropped in a spasm of premature pessimism.

The president-elect can’t just act, however. He has to tell the public that this is what the Democratic Party stands for. Mr. Biden’s former boss recently made a point he should heed. “In my first couple of years in office, I think I had an unwarranted faith that if we did the right thing and implemented good policies, then people would know,” Barack Obama told NPR’s Michel Martin. “We didn’t sell it hard enough.”

Mr. Biden needs to go bold, especially on Americans’ very real material needs, and he needs to brag about it when he does.

(Bryce Covert is a contributor at The Nation and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.)

Florida once again offered an electoral conundrum this year. Even as the state’s voters filled in the bubble for Donald Trump, they did the same for one of the policies that his opponent, Joe Biden, consistently championed on the campaign trail.

Florida once again offered an electoral conundrum this year. Even as the state’s voters filled in the bubble for Donald Trump, they did the same for one of the policies that his opponent, Joe Biden, consistently championed on the campaign trail. They voted by more than 20 percentage points to add an amendment to the Florida Constitution raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. A higher wage, in other words, actually got more votes than either presidential candidate. If you only listened to Republicans or cable news it would seem impossible, but it’s true: Americans, including many conservatives, agree on a number of fundamental progressive economic policies, even if they vehemently disagree on which party should carry them out. This isn’t just obvious in the polling; when these policies are put to voters directly, as many were on Election Day, voters consistently approve them. And voters passed these Democratic priorities not just in deep blue places, but purple and red ones as well. It’s a pattern that’s played out many times before: Every time voters have weighed whether to expand Medicaid, a policy many Republican politicians oppose, they’ve approved it, including in deep red states like Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska and Utah. Mr. Biden has a number of policies he could decide to champion once he takes office and many crises to resolve. But he would be smart to put the issues voters approved this election season — and which states and cities, our laboratories of democracy, have been experimenting with for years, proving they can actually work — at the top of his list. Florida is not the only place with a new $15 minimum wage. Voters in (admittedly very liberal) Portland, Me., approved the same in November. Many voters also said yes to higher taxes. In Arizona, a site of the Red for Ed teachers strikes in 2018 that demanded better funding for public education, a ballot measure to raise taxes on the wealthy to hire more teachers and school personnel and raise their pay was a winner. Voters in a few other places — the Portland, Ore. area; St. Louis; and statewide in Colorado — also approved increasing taxes to fund early childhood education. The measure in Portland is particularly notable not just because it will eventually raise $202 million a year, but also because of what it spends the money on. All 3- and 4-year-olds in the county Portland is in will get free, full-day preschool while pre-K teacher pay will be raised to rival that of kindergarten teachers, making it one of the most robust programs in the country. Coloradans also voted for a slight increase in payroll taxes to help fund a public paid family-leave program. State residents now have the honor of being the first in the country to approve paid family leave directly, after their lawmakers couldn’t manage to pass it for six years. Higher taxes didn’t win the day everywhere. Colorado voters also approved a reduction in the income tax. In California, even as voters passed some criminal justice reform measures, they said no to an initiative to change commercial property taxes to raise more funding for the public school system. But overall, this year’s ballot votes aren’t an anomaly. These are all consistently popular policies. A higher minimum wage has enjoyed nearly a quarter-century of going undefeated at the ballot box. Even a near doubling of the federal minimum garners strong support: two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of moderate Republicans, back a $15 minimum wage. Paid family leave is apparently a no-brainer, as more than 80 percent of voters support it, including strong majorities of Republicans. Even higher taxes, which are supposedly anathema to the American way, fare well in public polls. Americans have long felt that the rich don’t pay enough in taxes, while over the last decade a majority has come around to using higher taxes to redistribute wealth. Promise to put those taxes to use for a specific and popular good, like early education, and you appear to win over even more people. And yet the federal minimum wage has stayed stuck at $7.25 an hour for over a decade, the longest stretch we’ve ever gone without a raise. The United States is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid family leave. We also devote a much smaller share of our gross domestic product to early education than virtually all other developed countries, while ours is a relatively low tax country. The public often doesn’t connect policy preferences with politicians. Which party consistently champions a higher minimum wage? Mr. Biden’s. Which works against it and even has some members who have called for the current minimum to be abolished altogether? The other guys. Mr. Biden also promised paid family leave and higher taxes on the rich to fund benefits for everyone else, positions that have become core Democratic Party planks in recent years. And yet Florida shows that Americans can favor these policies but not necessarily the candidates who promise to act on them. The disconnect is partly the result of a lack of bold, clear action. Some voters may deliberately favor divided government; others may balk at the idea that Republicans could really oppose something like paid leave. But many more want better pay and benefits, yet don’t believe that Democrats will really deliver them. Mr. Biden faces myriad devastating problems when he takes office, first among them an uncontrolled pandemic. But he would be smart to prioritize the things voters have just approved for some of his earliest actions. A higher minimum wage, paid family leave and taxing the wealthy to support early education are bread-and-butter policies that address the very real economic problems Americans have long faced and that are even more acute now. Mr. Biden can get a jump start without Congress by requiring higher wages and paid family leave at federal contractors, increasing living standards for hundreds of thousands of Americans. But the rest of it will require cooperation from Congress. Should Democrats prevail in Georgia and control the Senate, these should be among the first items on their list, and even if they don’t, they shouldn’t just be dropped in a spasm of premature pessimism. The president-elect can’t just act, however. He has to tell the public that this is what the Democratic Party stands for. Mr. Biden’s former boss recently made a point he should heed. “In my first couple of years in office, I think I had an unwarranted faith that if we did the right thing and implemented good policies, then people would know,” Barack Obama told NPR’s Michel Martin. “We didn’t sell it hard enough.” Mr. Biden needs to go bold, especially on Americans’ very real material needs, and he needs to brag about it when he does. (Bryce Covert is a contributor at The Nation and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.)

OPINION: Biden should go big, and then brag about it

It looks like December 2020 is the month for the mystery of the metal monoliths as the disappearance and re-appearance continues in different parts of the world. While there are numerous conspiracy theories coming up, some men decided to take over the trend and replace it with something else — a cross.

A few hours after a metal monolith appeared in the state of <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/new-mystery-metal-monolith-appears-atop-a-mountain-in-california-347112">California</a>, a group of men, dressed in hats of 'Make America Great Again' decided to go to the location of the monolith and replaced it with a wooden cross.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/mystery-continues-strange-metal-monolith-now-spotted-in-romania-after-disappearing-from-utah-desert-346664">Mystery continues: Strange metal monolith now spotted in Romania after disappearing from Utah desert</a>

The men live-streamed the whole uprooting process of the monolith while chanting 'Christ is King' and 'Make America Great Again'.

"We don’t want illegal aliens from Mexico or outer space, so let’s tear this b***h down," the group was heard saying on the video.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ChristIsKing?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ChristIsKing</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Atascadero?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Atascadero</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PineMountain?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PineMountain</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Monolith?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Monolith</a> <a href="https://t.co/cgIOTCqwg5">pic.twitter.com/cgIOTCqwg5</a>
— Culture War Criminal (@CULTUREWARCRMNL) <a href="https://twitter.com/CULTUREWARCRMNL/status/1334525196611497984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 3, 2020</a></blockquote>
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As per experts, the chants heard in the live-streaming suggest that the men might be related to the 'Groyper' movement which is a Gen Z group of right-wingers in the US, which rose to fame especially after the 1026 win of the outgoing US President Donald Trump —&nbsp;Pundit Nick Fuentes, the famous American YouTube, political commentator is one of the most popular faces of the movement.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/mysterious-monolith-reportedly-disappears-from-utah-desert-346180">Mysterious monolith reportedly disappears from Utah desert</a>

The California monolith is not the only one which was vandalised. The Utah monolith — which was the first one found — was also vandalised by a group of angry environmentalists while yelling <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/dont-leave-trash-in-the-desert-utah-monolith-removal-explained-346822">"this is why you don’t leave trash in the desert."</a>

There has been no explanation to who has been installing these monoliths in remote areas of the world. However, there are different conspiracy theories stemming out of these installations which look similar to the alien establishments seen in&nbsp;Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

It looks like December 2020 is the month for the mystery of the metal monoliths as the disappearance and re-appearance continues in different parts of the world.

It looks like December 2020 is the month for the mystery of the metal monoliths as the disappearance and re-appearance continues in different parts of the world. While there are numerous conspiracy theories coming up, some men decided to take over the trend and replace it with something else — a cross. A few hours after a metal monolith appeared in the state of California, a group of men, dressed in hats of 'Make America Great Again' decided to go to the location of the monolith and replaced it with a wooden cross. Also read| Mystery continues: Strange metal monolith now spotted in Romania after disappearing from Utah desert The men live-streamed the whole uprooting process of the monolith while chanting 'Christ is King' and 'Make America Great Again'. "We don’t want illegal aliens from Mexico or outer space, so let’s tear this b***h down," the group was heard saying on the video. #ChristIsKing #Atascadero #PineMountain #Monolith pic.twitter.com/cgIOTCqwg5 — Culture War Criminal (@CULTUREWARCRMNL) December 3, 2020 × As per experts, the chants heard in the live-streaming suggest that the men might be related to the 'Groyper' movement which is a Gen Z group of right-wingers in the US, which rose to fame especially after the 1026 win of the outgoing US President Donald Trump — Pundit Nick Fuentes, the famous American YouTube, political commentator is one of the most popular faces of the movement. Also read| Mysterious monolith reportedly disappears from Utah desert The California monolith is not the only one which was vandalised. The Utah monolith — which was the first one found — was also vandalised by a group of angry environmentalists while yelling "this is why you don’t leave trash in the desert." There has been no explanation to who has been installing these monoliths in remote areas of the world. However, there are different conspiracy theories stemming out of these installations which look similar to the alien establishments seen in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

California metal monolith replaced with a Cross amid chants of 'Christ is king' by Trump supporters

The US&nbsp;President-elect&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>&nbsp;has asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/the-white-house">White House</a> expert on the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/coronavirus">coronavirus</a> pandemic, to continue in the 'exact same role' in the Biden administration.&nbsp;Dr. Fauci has played an important role in the COVID-19 taskforce under the presidency of the outgoing US President <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>.

Amid a rising number of coronavirus cases, Biden approached Dr. Fauci to take on the role of&nbsp;chief medical adviser in the Biden administration and keep carrying out the key responsibilities in the COVID-19 response team for the country.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/coronavirus-in-us-highest-ever-210000-new-cases-recorded-347351">Coronavirus in US: Highest-ever 210,000 new cases recorded</a>

"I asked him to stay on the exact same role he's had for the past several presidents, and I asked him to be a chief medical adviser for me as well, and be part of the Covid team," Biden told a national media channel.

As of now, no decision has been taken as Fauci is yet to meet the new administration, much to the dismay of Trump. "I'm going to be meeting with them today, by Zoom," Fauci told a media house.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/former-us-presidents-biden-agree-to-get-vaccinated-on-camera-to-spread-awareness-347341">Former US presidents, Biden agree to get vaccinated on camera to spread awareness</a>

"So today will be the first day where there will be substantive discussions about the transition between me and the Biden team,"&nbsp;Fauci added. "I'm very pleased that today we're having the first discussion about a number of things, vaccinations and things like that."

Fauci is the Director of the&nbsp;National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is known to be an expert, who has had a bitter-sweet relationship with Donald Trump — who has been accused of downplaying the novel coronavirus. Trump and Fauci have, in the recent past, several times sidelined Fauci's warnings of the grave effect of the novel coronavirus on the country.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/us-coronavirus-daily-deaths-surpasses-3000-347334">WATCH|</a>

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Fauci, repeatedly, asked people to wear masks when stepping out, and suggested people to maintain social distancing, if they have to step out for emergency work. However, Trump ignored all warnings passed on by the expert, which led to millions of people losing their lives.&nbsp;Trump was also criticised for holding rallies with less or no social distancing.

The announcement came as the country recorded it's highest single-day surge in the COVID-19 cases as it recorded nearly&nbsp;210,000 cases on Thursday and&nbsp;2,907 deaths

The US President-elect Joe Biden has asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House expert on the coronavirus pandemic, to continue in the 'exact same role' in the Biden administration.

The US President-elect Joe Biden has asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House expert on the coronavirus pandemic, to continue in the 'exact same role' in the Biden administration. Dr. Fauci has played an important role in the COVID-19 taskforce under the presidency of the outgoing US President Donald Trump. Amid a rising number of coronavirus cases, Biden approached Dr. Fauci to take on the role of chief medical adviser in the Biden administration and keep carrying out the key responsibilities in the COVID-19 response team for the country. Also read| Coronavirus in US: Highest-ever 210,000 new cases recorded "I asked him to stay on the exact same role he's had for the past several presidents, and I asked him to be a chief medical adviser for me as well, and be part of the Covid team," Biden told a national media channel. As of now, no decision has been taken as Fauci is yet to meet the new administration, much to the dismay of Trump. "I'm going to be meeting with them today, by Zoom," Fauci told a media house. Also read | Former US presidents, Biden agree to get vaccinated on camera to spread awareness "So today will be the first day where there will be substantive discussions about the transition between me and the Biden team," Fauci added. "I'm very pleased that today we're having the first discussion about a number of things, vaccinations and things like that." Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is known to be an expert, who has had a bitter-sweet relationship with Donald Trump — who has been accused of downplaying the novel coronavirus. Trump and Fauci have, in the recent past, several times sidelined Fauci's warnings of the grave effect of the novel coronavirus on the country. WATCH| × Fauci, repeatedly, asked people to wear masks when stepping out, and suggested people to maintain social distancing, if they have to step out for emergency work. However, Trump ignored all warnings passed on by the expert, which led to millions of people losing their lives. Trump was also criticised for holding rallies with less or no social distancing. The announcement came as the country recorded it's highest single-day surge in the COVID-19 cases as it recorded nearly 210,000 cases on Thursday and 2,907 deaths

Joe Biden asks Anthony Fauci to 'stay on the exact same role' in COVID-19 response team

A former Trump fundraiser and a prominent lawyer have been scrutinised by the US Justice Department for their respective&nbsp;roles in what is being described as a possible bribery scheme to win a presidential pardon for a convicted felon.

The New York Times first reported Lowell and Broidy's roles in the case on Thursday evening.

Lawyer Abbe Lowell's attorney and friend Reid Weingarten said his client was never a target or subject in the Justice Department's inquiry, while former fundraiser Elliot Broidy's attorney William Burck said his client was "not under investigation and has not been accused by anyone of any wrongdoing whatsoever."

A federal judge had earlier&nbsp;released a heavily redacted document which revealed that the Justice Department had obtained possible evidence of a bribery scheme in which someone “would offer a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence.”

The Justice Department had to ask the judge's permission to view certain emails between a lawyer and clients. The judge granted the request in August. At the time, US President Donald Trump described the investigation as "Fake News!" on Twitter.

In October, Broidy pleaded guilty in a separate case to illegally lobbying Trump to drop an investigation into a Malaysian embezzlement scandal.

Nothing in those court documents in Broidy's case made reference to conduct concerning the pardon bribery probe. Broidy's attorney Burck said his client's only role in the matter was putting Diller in contact with Lowell.

"Abbe's lawyering was utterly normal," Weingarten told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "Not exciting, not interesting and not successful. But by the book. There was no bribe, there was no promise of a bribe, and there was no clemency. There was not relief. The guy went to jail."

The filing indicates that the lobbyists and lawyers contacted White House officials requesting a presidential pardon or reprieve, citing the "past substantial campaign contributions" and "anticipated future substantial political contributions" from a donor.

It suggests that the donor is making the offer on behalf of the person seeking clemency.

The document does not indicate when the actions involved took place, and, in the sections not redacted, there is no reference to current President Donald Trump or to his campaign.

There is also public discussion of Trump issuing a pardon for himself, for any crimes he might be charged with related to his time in office -- though the legality of that has never been tested.

(with inputs from agencies)

A former Trump fundraiser and a prominent lawyer have been scrutinised by the US Justice Department for their respective roles in what is being described as a possible bribery scheme to win a presidential pardon for a convicted felon.

A former Trump fundraiser and a prominent lawyer have been scrutinised by the US Justice Department for their respective roles in what is being described as a possible bribery scheme to win a presidential pardon for a convicted felon. The New York Times first reported Lowell and Broidy's roles in the case on Thursday evening. Lawyer Abbe Lowell's attorney and friend Reid Weingarten said his client was never a target or subject in the Justice Department's inquiry, while former fundraiser Elliot Broidy's attorney William Burck said his client was "not under investigation and has not been accused by anyone of any wrongdoing whatsoever." A federal judge had earlier released a heavily redacted document which revealed that the Justice Department had obtained possible evidence of a bribery scheme in which someone “would offer a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence.” The Justice Department had to ask the judge's permission to view certain emails between a lawyer and clients. The judge granted the request in August. At the time, US President Donald Trump described the investigation as "Fake News!" on Twitter. In October, Broidy pleaded guilty in a separate case to illegally lobbying Trump to drop an investigation into a Malaysian embezzlement scandal. Nothing in those court documents in Broidy's case made reference to conduct concerning the pardon bribery probe. Broidy's attorney Burck said his client's only role in the matter was putting Diller in contact with Lowell. "Abbe's lawyering was utterly normal," Weingarten told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "Not exciting, not interesting and not successful. But by the book. There was no bribe, there was no promise of a bribe, and there was no clemency. There was not relief. The guy went to jail." The filing indicates that the lobbyists and lawyers contacted White House officials requesting a presidential pardon or reprieve, citing the "past substantial campaign contributions" and "anticipated future substantial political contributions" from a donor. It suggests that the donor is making the offer on behalf of the person seeking clemency. The document does not indicate when the actions involved took place, and, in the sections not redacted, there is no reference to current President Donald Trump or to his campaign. There is also public discussion of Trump issuing a pardon for himself, for any crimes he might be charged with related to his time in office -- though the legality of that has never been tested. (with inputs from agencies)

Roles of Kushner's lawyer, Trump fundraiser scrutinised in pardon bribery scheme probe

Not long after Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election last month, the pro-Trump media world began circulating a falsehood about him. In this telling, Barr had been part of a plot by a secret cabal of elites against President Donald Trump all along.

The most prominent right-wing personality who spread the baseless narrative was Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. In his nightly show monologue Tuesday, Dobbs said that Barr must be “either a liar or a fool or both” and suggested that he was “perhaps compromised.” Dobbs added that Barr “appeared to join in with the radical Dems and the deep state and the resistance.”

Dobbs’ unfounded accusation inspired dozens of Facebook posts and more than 14,000 likes and shares on the social network, as well as hundreds of posts on Twitter, over the past 24 hours, according to a New York Times analysis.

Many of the president’s most fervent supporters reacted virulently to Barr’s comments Tuesday because they dealt a blow to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election. The comments were also jarring to some conservatives because Barr had been a longtime Trump loyalist.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. But one of Barr’s former colleagues denied the attorney general was part of a secret plot against Trump.

George Terwilliger, who was Barr’s deputy in the 1990s when Barr was attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, said Barr’s intent in his Tuesday statement was “just to be responsible.” When there are unfounded conspiracy theories about the Justice Department, Terwilliger said, “it is responsible to say no, that did not happen.”

David Rohde, a New Yorker writer and former Times reporter who wrote the book “In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth About America’s Deep State,” added that Barr could not be involved with a cabal of elites because “in fact, there is no deep state plot.” He said the term “deep state,” which is shorthand for the conspiracy theory about Democratic elites secretly exercising political control over the public, has been co-opted and vulgarized by many in the pro-Trump universe.

Dobbs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The far right’s suspicions of Barr have been building for several days, partly because of comments made by Trump. In a Fox News interview on Nov. 29, the president declared that the Justice Department was “missing in action” in investigating allegations of widespread election fraud.

“You would think if you’re in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is the biggest thing you could be looking at,” Trump said. “Where are they? I’ve not seen anything.”

“They just keep moving along and they go on to the next president,” he added.

That set the stage for mistrust in Barr.

Even before Barr made his comments Tuesday about not having found voter fraud, Emerald Robinson of Newsmax, the conservative cable network, tweeted that it was “obvious now that Bill Barr came out of retirement to protect the DOJ/FBI from accountability for its role in Spygate.” She was referring to the convoluted and unfounded conspiracy theory involving a Democratic plot to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

After Barr publicly acknowledged the election results, Mark Levin, a conservative radio host, said on Twitter and Facebook that it was “misleading” and that “the DOJ has been very passive.”

The Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop and The Washington Times, which are far right websites, also piled on. In various articles, the sites said: “Barr’s masquerade as someone opposed to the criminality of the Deep State” was “a venal lie,” and claimed, without evidence, that the “DOJ is reluctant to investigate election fraud.”

The articles reached up to 886,000 people on Facebook, according to the analysis by The Times.

Not long after Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election last month, the pro-Trump media world began circulating a falsehood about him.

Not long after Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election last month, the pro-Trump media world began circulating a falsehood about him. In this telling, Barr had been part of a plot by a secret cabal of elites against President Donald Trump all along. The most prominent right-wing personality who spread the baseless narrative was Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. In his nightly show monologue Tuesday, Dobbs said that Barr must be “either a liar or a fool or both” and suggested that he was “perhaps compromised.” Dobbs added that Barr “appeared to join in with the radical Dems and the deep state and the resistance.” Dobbs’ unfounded accusation inspired dozens of Facebook posts and more than 14,000 likes and shares on the social network, as well as hundreds of posts on Twitter, over the past 24 hours, according to a New York Times analysis. Many of the president’s most fervent supporters reacted virulently to Barr’s comments Tuesday because they dealt a blow to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election. The comments were also jarring to some conservatives because Barr had been a longtime Trump loyalist. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. But one of Barr’s former colleagues denied the attorney general was part of a secret plot against Trump. George Terwilliger, who was Barr’s deputy in the 1990s when Barr was attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration, said Barr’s intent in his Tuesday statement was “just to be responsible.” When there are unfounded conspiracy theories about the Justice Department, Terwilliger said, “it is responsible to say no, that did not happen.” David Rohde, a New Yorker writer and former Times reporter who wrote the book “In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth About America’s Deep State,” added that Barr could not be involved with a cabal of elites because “in fact, there is no deep state plot.” He said the term “deep state,” which is shorthand for the conspiracy theory about Democratic elites secretly exercising political control over the public, has been co-opted and vulgarized by many in the pro-Trump universe. Dobbs did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The far right’s suspicions of Barr have been building for several days, partly because of comments made by Trump. In a Fox News interview on Nov. 29, the president declared that the Justice Department was “missing in action” in investigating allegations of widespread election fraud. “You would think if you’re in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is the biggest thing you could be looking at,” Trump said. “Where are they? I’ve not seen anything.” “They just keep moving along and they go on to the next president,” he added. That set the stage for mistrust in Barr. Even before Barr made his comments Tuesday about not having found voter fraud, Emerald Robinson of Newsmax, the conservative cable network, tweeted that it was “obvious now that Bill Barr came out of retirement to protect the DOJ/FBI from accountability for its role in Spygate.” She was referring to the convoluted and unfounded conspiracy theory involving a Democratic plot to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign. After Barr publicly acknowledged the election results, Mark Levin, a conservative radio host, said on Twitter and Facebook that it was “misleading” and that “the DOJ has been very passive.” The Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop and The Washington Times, which are far right websites, also piled on. In various articles, the sites said: “Barr’s masquerade as someone opposed to the criminality of the Deep State” was “a venal lie,” and claimed, without evidence, that the “DOJ is reluctant to investigate election fraud.” The articles reached up to 886,000 people on Facebook, according to the analysis by The Times.

Barr is not part of a secret anti-Trump plot

Over 1,000 Chinese researchers have left the United States amid a US crackdown on alleged technology theft, top US security officials have said.

The US-China relations have deteriorated to their worst in decades during outgoing American President Donald Trump's tenure with disputes simmering over issues from trade and technology to Hong Kong and the coronavirus.

On Wednesday, John Demers, chief of the US Justice Department's National Security Division, told a discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute think tank the researchers had left the country while the department launched multiple criminal cases against Chinese operatives for industrial and technological espionage.

They were, however, a different group from those mentioned by the State Department in September, when it said the United States had revoked visas for more than 1,000 Chinese nationals under a presidential measure denying entry to students and researchers deemed security risks.

US authorities believed these researchers fled the United States after the FBI conducted interviews in more than 20 cities and the State Department closed China’s Houston consulate in July.

William Evanina, chief of the counterintelligence branch of the office of the US Director of National Intelligence, told the same event Chinese agents were already targetting personnel of the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, as well as "people close" to Biden's team.

She added Chinese researchers in the United States who were under scrutiny of US agencies were "all coming here at the behest of the Chinese government."

China described the visa crackdown earlier this year as "naked" political persecution and racial discrimination that seriously violated human rights.

Over 1,000 Chinese researchers have left the United States amid a US crackdown on alleged technology theft, top US security officials have said. The US-China relations have deteriorated to their worst in decades during outgoing American President Donald Trump's tenure with disputes simmering over issues from trade and technology to Hong Kong and the coronavirus.

Over 1,000 Chinese researchers have left the United States amid a US crackdown on alleged technology theft, top US security officials have said. The US-China relations have deteriorated to their worst in decades during outgoing American President Donald Trump's tenure with disputes simmering over issues from trade and technology to Hong Kong and the coronavirus. On Wednesday, John Demers, chief of the US Justice Department's National Security Division, told a discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute think tank the researchers had left the country while the department launched multiple criminal cases against Chinese operatives for industrial and technological espionage. They were, however, a different group from those mentioned by the State Department in September, when it said the United States had revoked visas for more than 1,000 Chinese nationals under a presidential measure denying entry to students and researchers deemed security risks. US authorities believed these researchers fled the United States after the FBI conducted interviews in more than 20 cities and the State Department closed China’s Houston consulate in July. William Evanina, chief of the counterintelligence branch of the office of the US Director of National Intelligence, told the same event Chinese agents were already targetting personnel of the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, as well as "people close" to Biden's team. She added Chinese researchers in the United States who were under scrutiny of US agencies were "all coming here at the behest of the Chinese government." China described the visa crackdown earlier this year as "naked" political persecution and racial discrimination that seriously violated human rights.

Chinese researchers leave US; agents target Biden team

Incumbent US President Donald Trump has a few weeks left in the White House, and now he wants to save his allies and children from prosecution. Once they leave the White House, Trump and his inner circle could be sued. Until Trump holds office, he is immune to any legal action.

Watch |&nbsp;

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Reportedly, Donald Trump is considering a way to keep his kids and allies safe from prosecution. Trump has discussed with his advisers whether he could fetch pre-emptive pardons to protect his three eldest children - Donald Trump Junior, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump along with his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Why is Trump mulling that?

Reportedly, Trump is concerned that the US Justice Department might prosecute his inner circle. Donald Trump Junior has been under investigation for his contacts with Russians during the 2016 election campaign.

Jared Kushner faces the charge of lying to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners. There are no clear charges against Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump or Rudy Giuliani yet. But the legal scrutiny against team Trump is tightening.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/trump-threatens-military-spending-veto-in-social-media-bias-battle-346871" hreflang="en">Trump threatens military spending veto in social media bias battle</a>

The US Justice Department has opened an investigation into an alleged "bribery for pardon" scheme at the White House. Allegedly, during Trump's tenure an individual offered a substantial political donation in exchange for a presidential pardon. The court filings are heavily redacted and nobody knows if Donald Trump or any members of his inner circle are named in this case. Donald Trump called the official investigation fake news.

A presidential pardon is an action by a sitting president to completely set aside the punishment for a federal crime. Pardons that pre-empt criminal charges are not common. Perhaps the most famous example of one is when Gerald Ford gave a pardon to Richard Nixon.

Ford succeeded Nixon when he was forced to leave office after the “watergate” scandal. After taking over, Ford gave a full and unconditional pardon to Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as president. Donald Trump claims he can pardon myself. No one has done it before, which is why the move is bound to trigger a legal challenge.

Setbacks continue

US Attorney general William Barr has now said that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of this year's election. American attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up on specific complaints, but have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/biden-vows-no-quick-rollback-of-trumps-china-tariffs-346892" hreflang="en">Biden vows no quick rollback of Trump's China tariffs</a>

“This is incredibly significant for the attorney general to come out and say there is no widespread voter fraud that would impact the outcome of the election. It you know, directly contradicts what we've heard from the president and his allies who have alleged that there is such fraud. But the attorney general was very clear here. The justice department had investigated specific instances where, you know, allegations had been made. They've looked into these claims and they've determined there was no evidence of widespread fraud”, Michael Balsamo, Associated Press’ Justice Department reporter said.

Despite that, the Trump campaign has moved the American supreme court, and a petition challenging the results from Wisconsin has been filed. As Biden prepares for his inauguration, it looks like Trump is unwilling to go down without a fight.

Incumbent US President Donald Trump has a few weeks left in the White House, and now he wants to save his allies and children from prosecution. Once they leave the White House, Trump and his inner circle could be sued.

Incumbent US President Donald Trump has a few weeks left in the White House, and now he wants to save his allies and children from prosecution. Once they leave the White House, Trump and his inner circle could be sued. Until Trump holds office, he is immune to any legal action. Watch | Reportedly, Donald Trump is considering a way to keep his kids and allies safe from prosecution. Trump has discussed with his advisers whether he could fetch pre-emptive pardons to protect his three eldest children - Donald Trump Junior, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump along with his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Why is Trump mulling that? Reportedly, Trump is concerned that the US Justice Department might prosecute his inner circle. Donald Trump Junior has been under investigation for his contacts with Russians during the 2016 election campaign. Jared Kushner faces the charge of lying to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners. There are no clear charges against Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump or Rudy Giuliani yet. But the legal scrutiny against team Trump is tightening. Also read: Trump threatens military spending veto in social media bias battle The US Justice Department has opened an investigation into an alleged "bribery for pardon" scheme at the White House. Allegedly, during Trump's tenure an individual offered a substantial political donation in exchange for a presidential pardon. The court filings are heavily redacted and nobody knows if Donald Trump or any members of his inner circle are named in this case. Donald Trump called the official investigation fake news. A presidential pardon is an action by a sitting president to completely set aside the punishment for a federal crime. Pardons that pre-empt criminal charges are not common. Perhaps the most famous example of one is when Gerald Ford gave a pardon to Richard Nixon. Ford succeeded Nixon when he was forced to leave office after the “watergate” scandal. After taking over, Ford gave a full and unconditional pardon to Nixon for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as president. Donald Trump claims he can pardon myself. No one has done it before, which is why the move is bound to trigger a legal challenge. Setbacks continue US Attorney general William Barr has now said that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of this year's election. American attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up on specific complaints, but have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims. Also read: Biden vows no quick rollback of Trump's China tariffs “This is incredibly significant for the attorney general to come out and say there is no widespread voter fraud that would impact the outcome of the election. It you know, directly contradicts what we've heard from the president and his allies who have alleged that there is such fraud. But the attorney general was very clear here. The justice department had investigated specific instances where, you know, allegations had been made. They've looked into these claims and they've determined there was no evidence of widespread fraud”, Michael Balsamo, Associated Press’ Justice Department reporter said. Despite that, the Trump campaign has moved the American supreme court, and a petition challenging the results from Wisconsin has been filed. As Biden prepares for his inauguration, it looks like Trump is unwilling to go down without a fight.

Why does US President Trump want pre-emptive pardons for himself and family?

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