This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Wash U chapter.
- People actually believe him. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of interference or voter fraud in this past election, Trump has continuously denied the election results. President Trump has persisted with his tweets, and he has stated that the “fake news media” is falsely declaring Joe Biden as the winner of the election. In a recent speech given by President Trump, he said that “time will tell” who the winner of this election is. The danger is that pro-Trump supporters believe that he is telling the truth and that he really has won the election. One of the major issues with this is that it gives a false sense of hope to the 71 million Americans who voted for Trump. There is an extremely low chance that Trump’s attempt to delay and deny election results by pursuing legal challenges will change the results of the election given the large extent to which Joe Biden has won.
- Creating confusion about election results may cause people to doubt the democratic system we have in the United States. This has the potential to create serious conflict between those who believe in the election results and trust the democratic system and those who do not. Thousands of Trump supporters rallied in Washington D.C. on November 14th to support these false claims that Trump has won the election. These supporters clashed with those who were rallying and are Anti-Trump and dozens of people were arrested. Moreover, it could be harmful to our democratic system if there are thousands of Americans who believe it is fraudulent and unfair, even supposing the fact that this election has been said to be the most secure election in history.
- Additional perplexity is created by the fact that there is conflicting information coming from the Trump administration. It has been reported that President Trump’s inner circle including the First Lady and Jared Kushner have advised him to concede. However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Donald Jr., and Eric Trump have urged the public to reject widely accepted election results that declare Joe Biden as the winner. Some of Trump’s advisors have gone as far as to say that they are already preparing for a Trump second term. When asked about how it would appear if Trump did not attend the Biden inauguration in January, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany urged that Trump would for sure attend the inauguration because he can’t miss his own inauguration. Even those who support President Trump are hearing conflicting opinions from his administration, which creates a tremendous amount of confusion.
- The uncertainty of a non-peaceful transfer of power is causing uneasiness amongst Americans. All American presidents have peacefully transferred power to the President Elect. When President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Obama extended an invitation to President Trump to come to the White House and congratulated him on his win, despite previous comments made by President Trump that Obama was the “worst president” that our country has ever seen. Even with an immense amount of tension between Obama and Trump, there was still a peaceful transfer of power between presidencies. It is unclear what will happen if Trump continues to deny election results and refuses to transfer power to President Elect Joe Biden, and this uncertainty is something that is making many Americans extremely uneasy.
- While President Trump continues to ignore and refuse to accept the election results, thousands of Americans are dying from COVID-19. Hospitals are now reporting more COVID-19 patients than were reported during the peak in the spring. The COVID-19 situation is continuing to worsen around the country, as President Trump merely tweets about denying election results. Both Pfizer and Moderna have recently announced early vaccine success; however, President Trump has tweeted about how the vaccine will roll out to all states except for New York due to claims that Governor Cuomo “will delay using it.” President Trump is still referring to COVID as the “Chinese virus” in his tweets, inciting even more hatred and xenophobia in the United States and across the globe. As thousands of Americans are dying each day and conditions worsen, it does not appear that the Trump administration is making any new progress in protecting Americans against COVID.