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    'A new day of hope': US politicians and ex-presidents hail Biden-Harris victory

    Former presidents and politicians from both major parties weighed in to congratulate Joe Biden on his victory over Donald Trump, with Democrats eager to turn the page on four years of tumult and some Republicans offering prayers and best wishes while hinting at the partisan combat to come.Biden was declared the winner of Pennsylvania on Saturday, pushing him over the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency after days of uncertainty as election officials counted an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots due to coronavirus pandemic. Trump has refused to concede.“In this election, under circumstances never experienced, Americans turned out in numbers never seen,” Barack Obama said in a statement praising his former vice president and Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris. “And once every vote is counted, President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris will have won a historic and decisive victory.”Obama implored Americans to stay active, urging them not to view Biden’s election as the finale after four years of protest and action but rather to see it as a stepping stone in their quest for progress.“Enjoy this moment,” he continued. “Then stay engaged. I know it can be exhausting. But for this democracy to endure, it requires our active citizenship and sustained focus on the issues – not just in an election season, but all the days in between.”Former president Jimmy Carter, who lost his re-election bid in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980, congratulated the Democratic ticket, which may be the first to win his home state of Georgia in more than a quarter-century.“We are proud of their well-run campaign and look forward to seeing the positive change they bring to our nation,” he said in a statement.Shortly after Biden clinched Pennsylvania, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer called Biden to congratulate him. According to an aide, it was a “happy call”. Schumer, who had joined revelers in Brooklyn, held up his phone for Biden to hear their cheers and applause.“Today marks the dawning of a new day of hope for America,” Pelosi said in a statement. “A record-shattering 75 million Americans cast their ballots to elect Joe Biden President of the United States – a historic victory that has handed Democrats a mandate for action.”House Democrats will maintain their majority, but Pelosi is on track to lead the thinnest majority in decades after sustaining unexpected losses. The Senate majority will almost certainly be decided by a pair of runoff elections in Georgia in January.Republicans appeared divided on Saturday between accepting the new president-elect and standing by Trump.Utah Senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee who did not vote for Trump, congratulated Biden and Harris, praising them as “people of good will and admirable character.”Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee who is retiring, urged Trump to follow more than two centuries of precedent and accept the outcome of the election.“After counting every valid vote and allowing courts to resolve disputes, it is important to respect and promptly accept the result,” he wrote.Like Trump, many of his closest allies were unwilling to accept the result, at least not yet.“The media do not get to determine who the president is. The people do,” Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a Republican seen as having presidential ambitions, wrote on twitter. “When all lawful votes have been counted, recounts finished, and allegations of fraud addressed, we will know who the winner is.” More

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    Obama compares Trump to a 'two-bit dictator' who lies ‘every single day' – video

    Former US president Barack Obama has criticised Donald Trump for casting doubt on the results of the election, likening him to strongmen elsewhere in the world. Addressing a drive-in rally in Miami on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s behalf, Obama said his successor has suggested he may declare victory before all the votes are counted. ‘That’s something a two-bit dictator does,’ Obama said. The former president also accused Trump of ‘lying every single day … the fact-checkers can’t keep up, it’s like, just over and over again’
    US election 2020: Obama accuses Trump of ‘lying every single day’ at Florida rally for Biden – live More

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    Obama lends a hand as Biden and Trump launch final campaign blitz

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    America was on edge on Saturday as Donald Trump and Joe Biden launched a final campaign blitz amid a surging pandemic, record early voting and gnawing uncertainty over when the outcome of the presidential election will be known.
    Trailing in the polls, Trump began a frenzied schedule of 14 rallies in three days, even as the coronavirus scythed through the country. The US recorded more than 99,000 cases on Friday, its biggest ever single-day total. Many of the worst outbreaks are in the battleground states where the president is travelling.
    Biden campaigned with Barack Obama at drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit, predominantly Black cities where strong turnout will be essential in the fight for Michigan. Stevie Wonder was to perform in Detroit.
    In Flint, Obama decried Trump as a president “who goes out of his way to insult people just because they don’t support them”.
    “With Joe and Kamala at the helm,” he said, “you’re not going to have to think about them every day. You’re not going to have to argue with your family about him every day. It won’t be so exhausting. You’ll be able to get on with your lives.”
    Obama also went after Trump’s idea of masculinity, saying that being a man once meant “taking care of other people”, rather than “strutting and showing off, acting important, bullying people”.
    Following the former president on stage, Biden briefly slipped back into much-criticised attack lines against Trump, who he has previously said he would like to fight. “When you were in high school wouldn’t you have liked to take a shot?” he asked, before apparently remembering to keep to the high road.
    “That’s a different story … but anyway. [Trump is] macho man.”
    Both men repeated Biden’s vow to get the coronavirus pandemic under control. But with record numbers of infections, and record numbers of voters casting ballots early, the dominant narratives of 2020 were still hurtling towards a potentially destabilising climax. There was intense anxiety over whether Tuesday will deliver a clear verdict or a prolonged, agonising vote count, over days or even weeks.
    More than eight in 10 Americans (86%) are somewhat or very worried there will be violent protests following the election, the Public Religion Research Institute found. Businesses in New York, Washington and other cities were boarding up in case of trouble.
    Trump has spent months claiming, without evidence, that he can only lose if it the vote is rigged. He has threatened to challenge the outcome and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. In rural Pennsylvania on Saturday, the president told supporters they should scrutinise polls in Philadelphia, a Democratic city, on election day.
    Democrats have called for massive turnout, to put the result beyond doubt.
    The election comes after a year that has seen an impeachment trial, an economic crisis and a reckoning over racial injustice. But Covid-19 remains the defining issue and the candidates’ closing arguments could not be more different.
    Biden has been driving home the message that Trump mismanaged a pandemic that has infected 9 million and killed 229,000. “He’s doing nothing,” the former vice-president said this week. “We’re learning to die with it. Donald Trump has waved the white flag, abandoned our families and surrendered to the virus.”
    In Florida on Thursday, the president, who spent three nights in hospital after becoming infected, said: “You know the bottom line, though? You’re gonna get better. You’re gonna get better. If I can get better, anybody can get better. And I got better fast.”
    On Friday, he baselessly claimed: “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid. You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry but everybody dies of Covid.’”
    The president was to hold four rallies in Pennsylvania on Saturday, then five on Sunday and five on Monday across Iowa, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Observing mostly maskless supporters crammed together, critics have branded such rallies “super-spreader events”.
    Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who advised Al Gore and John Kerry, said: “Trump is frantically flying around the country in Air Force One giving these rally speeches, which I think motivate his base but also alienate a lot of other voters because they look at the pictures where people are cheek by jowl and there’s no masking.”
    Noting an outbreak among Vice-President Mike Pence’s staff, Shrum added: “You have just had Covid invade the White House for a second time, so I think it adds to the sense that that he can’t handle Covid.”
    Polls show Biden with a consistent lead nationally and up by smaller margins in the states that will decide the electoral college. Democrats could also win a majority in the Senate, potentially ending years of gridlock.
    But few are complacent. The final Fox News poll in 2016 showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 48% to 44%; the final Fox News poll this year has Biden up 52%-44%. Analysts say that if polls are off by the same margin, Biden will still win.
    Bob Woodward, author of two bestselling books about Trump, said: “It looks like Biden’s going to win but I would not bet more than a dollar on it. I think it’s quite possible that Trump will win.” More

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    ‘He's jealous of Covid’s media coverage’: Obama ridicules Trump at Florida rally

    Barack Obama ridiculed Donald Trump at a Florida rally on Tuesday for the president’s complaints about the media closely covering the national coronavirus crisis.
    The 44th president has recently abandoned traditional decorum where a former president refrains from publicly criticizing his successor, lambasting the 45th president in recent speeches for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, in particular.
    At a drive-in rally in Orlando to boost support for his former Vice President and now Democratic nominee for the White House, Joe Biden, Obama took a tone combining mockery of Trump with indignation.
    He spoke of record numbers dying of coronavirus in the US and asked rhetorically of the president: “What is his closing argument?” with the election just a week away.
    “That people are too focused on Covid. He said this at one of his rallies ‘Covid, Covid, Covid’, he is complaining. He is jealous of Covid’s media coverage,” Obama said with mock incredulity as the crowd laughed.

    At a rally on Saturday in North Carolina, Trump did say those words and complained that the media was paying too much attention to coronavirus, even as he claimed record case numbers are exaggerated and downplayed the death rates.
    Obama said: “If he had been focused on Covid from the beginning, cases would not be reaching record highs across the country this week, the White House would not be having its second outbreak in a month.
    Staff working for Mike Pence, the vice-president, have come down with Covid, it was revealed at the weekend, just a few weeks after Trump, his wife and youngest son all had coronavirus and multiple prominent people tested positive after the event at the White House to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court.
    Obama also roasted the White House for chief of staff Mark Meadows’s remark on television at the weekend that the administration was not going to control the pandemic.
    Obama said: “Winter is coming. They are waving the white flag of surrender. Florida, we can’t afford four more years of this, that’s why we’ve got to send Joe Biden to the White House.”
    Trump tweeted that it was a “no crowd, fake speech” and slammed conservative Fox News for airing it.
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    Obama mocks Trump: 'He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage' – video

    Former US president Barack Obama mocked Donald Trump at an election rally for Joe Biden in Florida. Obama criticised his successor’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, noting that Trump had complained about the amount of news coverage it had received even as the US death toll continues to climb. ‘He’s jealous of Covid’s media coverage,’ Obama said.
    The former president also criticised Trump for his personal lack of coronavirus safety, saying that he had turned the White House into a ‘hot zone’ in the wake of two coronavirus outbreaks among the president and his senior staff. ‘Florida, we can’t afford four more years of this,’ Obama added. ‘We cannot afford this kind of incompetence and disinterest.’ More

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    Trump responds to Barack Obama's speech at Biden-Harris rally – video

    Donald Trump has responded to Barack Obama’s speech at a campaign rally for Joe Biden, saying the former president underestimated him in 2016. “I think the only one, the only one more unhappy than crooked Hillary that night was Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump said. Less than two weeks from the election, Trump’s campaign took him to North Carolina, where he told supporters “I love this particular state, but I might not have come here so often. I’ve been all over your state, you better let me win” More

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    Barack Obama likens Donald Trump to 'crazy uncle' in Joe Biden rally speech – video

    Barack Obama has delivered a stinging rebuke of president Donald Trump in a speech delivered in Philadelphia while campaigning for Joe Biden. Obama criticised Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis as well as divisive behaviour including retweeting conspiracy theories that you wouldn’t tolerate from  anyone “except from a crazy uncle”. The former president also praised the positivity shown during the pandemic and recent Black Lives Matter movement . “We see that what is best is us is still there, but we’ve got to give it voice.” More