Administration of Donald J. Trump, 2020

November 5, 2020

Good evening. I'd like to provide the American people with an update on our efforts to protect the integrity of our very important 2020 election. If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in lateâwe're looking at them very strongly. But a lot of votes came in late.

I've already decisively won many critical States, including massive victories in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, to name just a few. We won these and many other victories despite historic election interference from big media, big money, and big tech.

As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers. And the pollsters got it knowingly wrong. They got it knowingly wrong. We had polls that were so ridiculous, and everybody knew that at the time. There was no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave; that was false. That was done for suppression reasons. But instead, there was a big red wave. And it's been properly acknowledged, actually, by the media. They were, I think, very impressed, but that was after the fact. That doesn't do us any good.

We kept the Senate, despite having twice as many seats to defend as Democrats. And in a reallyâmuch more competitive States, we'veâwe did a fantastic job with the Senate. I think we're very proud of what's happened there. We had many more seats to defend.

They spent almost $200 million on Senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky aloneâtwo racesâand hundreds of millions of dollars overall against us. At the national level, our opponents' major donors were Wall Street bankers and special interests. Our major donors were police officers, farmers, everyday citizens. Yet, for the first time ever, we lost zero races in the House. I was talking to Kevin McCarthy today. He said he couldn't believe it: zero races. Very unusual thing. Zero. And actually won many new seats with, I think, many more on the way.

This was also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to Congress than ever before. That's a great achievement. I won the largest share of non-White voters of any Republican in 60 years, including historic numbers of Latino, African American, Asian American, and Native American votersâthe largest ever in our history. We grew our party by 4 million voters, the greatest turnout in Republican Party history.

Democrats are the party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech, it seems. And Republicans have become the party of the American worker, and that's what's happened. And we're also, I believe, the party of inclusion.

As everyone now recognizes, media polling was election interference, in the truest sense of that word, by powerful special interests. These really phony pollsâI have to call them phony polls, fake pollsâwere designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden, and diminish Republicans' ability to raise funds. They were what's called "suppression polls." Everyone knows that now. And it's never been used to the extent that it's been used on this last election.

To highlight just a few examples: The day before election, Quinnipiacâwhich was wrong on every occasion that I know ofâhad Joe Biden up by 5 points in Florida, and they were off by

8.4 points. And I won Florida easily. Easily. So they had me losing Florida by a lot, and I ended up winning Florida by a lot. Other than that, they were very accurate. They had him up 4 points in

Ohio, and they were off by 12.2 points. And I also won Ohioâthe great State of Ohioâvery easily.

The Washington Post had Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin, and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 points, and they knew that. They're not stupid people. They knew that.

Suppression.

There are now only a few States yet to be decided in the Presidential race. The voting apparatus of those States are run, in all cases, by Democrats. We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually. And then, our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret, and they wouldn't allow legally permissible observers. We went to court, in a couple of instances, and we were able to get the observers put in. And when the observers got there, they wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 80 feet, 100 feet awayâor outside the building to observe people inside the building.

And we won a caseâa big case. And we have others happening. There are a lot ofâlots of litigation. Even beyond our litigation, there's tremendous amount of litigation generally because of how unfair this process was, and I predicted that. I've been talking about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system.

It's a corrupt system. And it makes people corrupt even if they aren't by nature, but they become corrupt; it's too easy. They want to find out how many votes they need, and then they seem to be able to find them. They wait and wait, and then they find them.

And you see that on election night. We were ahead in votes in North Carolina by a lotâ tremendous number of votes. And we're still ahead by a lot, but not as many, because they're finding ballots all of a sudden. "Oh, we have some mail-in ballots."

It's amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided too. I know that it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats, but in all cases, they're so one-sided.

We were up by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot, and that gets whittled down toâI think they said now we're up by 90,000 votes. And they'll keep coming and coming and coming. They find them all over. And they don't want us to have any observers, although we won a court case. The judge said you have to have observers.

Likewise, in Georgiaâand they're appealing. Actually, they're appealing. We won a case that we want people to watch, and we want observers, and they're actually appealing, which is sort of interesting. I wonder why they'd appealâthat all we want to do is have people watch as they do the vote tabulations.

Likewise, in Georgia, I won by a lotâa lotâwith a lead of overâgetting close to 300,000 votes on election night in Georgia. And by the way, got whittled down, and now it's getting to be to a point where I'll go from winning by a lot to perhaps being even down a little bit.

In Georgia, a pipe burst in a faraway location, totally unrelated to the location of what was happening, and they stopped counting for four hours, and a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats.

We also had margins of 300,000 in Michigan. We were way up in Michigan, won the State.

And in Wisconsin, we did likewise fantastically well. And that got whittled down. Everyâin every case, they got whittled down.

Today we're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry, I guess, 55 percent of the remaining voteâ55 percent margins. And that's a margin that we've significantly exceeded. So we'll see what happens with that, but we're on track to do okay in Arizona.

Our goal is to defend the integrity of the election. We'll not allow the corruption to steal such an important election or any election, for that matter. And we can't allow silenceâanybody to silence our voters and manufacture results.

I've never hadâI've been doing a lot of public things for a long time; I've never had anything that's been as inspirational by peopleâcalling, talking, sending things to us. I've never seen suchâsuch love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this. People know what's happening, and they see what's happening, and it's before their eyes.

And there are many instances which will be reported very shortly. There's tremendous litigation going on. And this is a case where they're trying to steal an election, they're trying to rig an election, and we can't let that happen. Detroit and Philadelphiaâknown as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country, easilyâcannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a Presidential raceâa very important Presidential race.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the State Supreme Court to try and ban our election observers and very strongly. Now, we won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody in there. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots, and I can't imagine why. There's absolutely no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process, because if it's straight, they would beâthey should be proud of it. Instead, they're trying, obviously, to commit fraud. There's no question about that.

In Philadelphia, observers have been kept far awayâvery far awayâso far that people are using binoculars to try and see, and there's been tremendous problems caused. They put paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and become somewhat violent.

The 11th Circuit ruled that, in Georgia, the votes have been in by election dayâthat they should be in by election day, and they weren't. Votes are coming in after election day. And they had a ruling already that you have to have the votes in by election day. To the best of my knowledge, votes should be in by election day, and they didn't do that.

Democrat officials never believed they could win this election honestly. I really believe that. That's why they did the mail-in ballots, where there's tremendous corruption and fraud going on. That's why they mailed out tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification measures whatsoever. And I've told everybody that these things would happen, because I've seen it happen. I watched a lot of different elections before they decided to go with this big, massive election with tens of millions of ballots going out to everybody, in many cases, totally unsolicited.

This was unprecedented in American history. This was by design. Despite years of claiming to care about the election security, they refuse to include any requirement to verify signatures, identities, or even determine whether they're eligible or ineligible to vote. People are walking in that they have no idea; they're just taking numbers. They're writing down thingsâthe workersâ and doing a lot of bad things. And we have a lot of information coming and litigation that you'll see that will shake even you people up, and you've seen it all.

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania and other key States are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you've written aboutâand, for a long time, you've been writing about the corrupt Democrat machine. I went to school there, and I know a lot about it. It hasn't changed. It's a long time ago, and it hasn't changed. It's gotten worse.

In Pennsylvania, partisan Democrats have allowed ballots in the State to be received 3 days after the election, and we think much more than that. And they are counting those without even postmarks or any identification whatsoever. So you don't have postmarks; you don't have

identification. There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the Nation. Our campaign has been denied access to observe any counting in Detroit. Detroit is another place.

So you don't have postmarks; you don't have identification. There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the Nation. Our campaign has been denied access to observe any counting in Detroit. Detroit is another placeâand I wouldn't say has the best reputation for election integrity.

Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots. But when our observers attempted to challenge the activity, those poll workers jumped in front of the volunteers to block their view so that they couldn't see what they were doing, and it became a little bit dangerous.

One major hub for counting ballots in Detroit covered up the windows, again, with large pieces of cardboard. And so they wanted to protect and block the counting area. They didn't want anybody seeing the counting, even though these were observers who are legal observers that were supposed to be there.

In Detroit, there were hours of unexplained delay in delivering many of the votes for counting. The final batch did not arrive until 4 in the morning andâeven though the polls closed at 8 o'clock. So they brought it in, and the batches came in, and nobody knew where they came from. We've also been denied access to observe in critical places in Georgia.

In multiple swing States, counting was halted for hours and hours on election night, with results withheld from major Democrat-run locations, only to appear later. And they certainly appeared, and they all had the name "Biden" on them or just about allâI think almost all. They all had the name "Biden" on them, which is a little strange.

I challenge Joe and every Democrat to clarify that they only want legal votes. Because they talk about votes, and I think they should use the word "legal"â"legal votes." "We want every legal vote counted." And I want every legal vote counted. We want openness and transparencyâ no secret count rooms, no mystery ballots, no illegal votes being cast after election day.

You have election day, and the laws are very strong on that. You have an election day. And they don't want votes cast after election day, and they want the process to be an honest one. It's so important. We want an honest election, and we want an honest count, and we want honest people working back there because it's a very important job.

So that's the way this country is going to win. That's the way the United States will win. And we think we will win the election very easily. We think there's going to be a lot of litigation, because we have so much evidence, so much proof. And it's going to end up, perhaps, at the highest court in the land. We'll see. But we think there'll be a lot of litigation because we can't have an election stolen byâlike this.

And I tell you, I wouldâI have been talking about this for many months with all of you.

And I've said very strongly that mail-in ballots are going to end up being a disaster. Small elections were a disaster. Small, very easy-to-handle elections were disastrous.

This is a large-scale version, and it's getting worse and worse every day. We're hearing stories that are horror storiesâabsolute horror stories. And we can't let that happen to the United States of America. It's not a question of who winsâRepublican, Democrat; Joe, myself. We can't let that happen to our country. We can't be disgraced by having something like this happen.

So it will be, hopefully, cleared up, maybe soon; I hope soon. But it will probably go through a processâa legal process. And, as you know, I've claimed certain States, and he's claiming States. So we can both claim the States, but ultimately, I have a feeling judges are going to have to rule. But there's been a lot of shenanigans, and we can't stand for that in our country.

Thank you very much.

NOTE: The President spoke at 6:48 p.m. in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to House Minority Leader Kevin O. McCarthy; Democratic Presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden, Jr.; and Christine Fizzano Cannon, judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Categories: Addresses and Remarks : Presidential election. Locations: Washington, DC

Names: Biden, Joseph R., Jr.; Cannon, Christine Fizzano; McCarthy, Kevin O.

Subjects: Congress : House of Representatives :: Minority leader; Elections : 2020 Presidential and congressional elections; Elections : Absentee ballot policies; Elections : Election system security, strengthening efforts; Elections : Voter participation.

DCPD Number: DCPD202000836.