WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he will leave the White House if the Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden in December.
The president gave the remarks to reporters after concluding a teleconference with U.S. troops to mark the Thanksgiving holiday. He said if the Electoral College confirms Biden’s victory when it meets on Dec. 14, he “certainly” will relinquish presidential power. “It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede … If they (the electors) do (vote for Biden) they made a mistake,” he said. Trump doubled down on the claim that there was voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election. “No one wants to see the kind of fraud this election has come to represent,” he said. “I know one thing, Joe Biden didn’t get 80 million votes.”
Biden has won 80,218,808 popular votes to date, compared to Trump’s 73,947,962 votes, according to The Cook Political Report, an influential analytical site focused on U.S. presidential, congressional and gubernatorial elections. U.S. media have projected that Biden has won 306 electoral votes, surpassing the 270-vote threshold for clinching the presidency. Biden has declared victory and announced the first tranche of his Cabinet nominees, including national security and foreign policy officials. The General Services Administration has initiated Biden’s formal transition into the White House, but Trump, despite having directed his administration to facilitate the process, has vowed to continue the legal fight to challenge the election results.
