WASHINGTON (WCBS 880) — President Donald Trump declared victory in the presidential race early Wednesday morning, despite some key battleground states remaining too close to call, and vowed to get the Supreme Court involved after alleging a "major fraud" had occurred.
Speaking at the White House around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, the president touted wins in several states and then claimed his voters were being disenfranchised.
"Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won't stand for it," Trump said. "We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything and then all of a sudden it was just called off."
"This is a fraud on the American public, this is an embarrassment to our country," the president continued. "We'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop, we don't want them to find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and add them to the list. It's a very sad moment and we will win this, and as far as I'm concerned, we already have won it."
As the Associated Press notes, there is no more voting — just counting — and there's no evidence of foul play in the election.
The president continued to question the count later Wednesday tweeting, "Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the "pollsters" got it completely & historically wrong!"
Twitter flagged the tweet as "disputed" and said it "might be misleading," which prompted the president to ask "WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?"
The night ended with hundreds of thousands of votes still to be counted, leaving the race up in the air.
Trump and Biden delivering remarks at separate Election Night eventsChip Somodevilla and Win McNamee/Getty Images
Many states made it easier for voters to request an absentee ballot, or mail-in ballot, amid the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of absentee ballots were distributed across the country as many people were concerned about potentially contracting the virus at a crowded polling location.
However, mail-in ballots generally take more time to process than ballots that are cast in person.
In some states, such as New York, mail-in ballots are not counted until Election Day. This allows people who voted by mail to invalidate their absentee ballot, should they decide to vote in-person.
In some areas, the full count may not be known for at least a week.
Earlier, Joe Biden struck a different tone as he addressed supporters around 12:30 a.m. in Delaware. The former vice president urged patience as the count continues.
"We believe we're on track to win this election," Biden said after he took the stage at a drive-in rally outside the Chase Center, with his wife by his side. "We knew because of the unprecedented early vote and mail in vote that it was going to take a while. We're going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished and it ain't over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted."
Biden said results could be known as early as Wednesday morning, but cautioned that it may take "a little longer."
"We're feeling good about where we are," the Democrat said and asked supporters to "keep the faith."
