In the early hours of Wednesday morning with a number of key battleground states undecided, President Donald Trump appeared in front of cameras in the White House and falsely declared that he had won. The announcement was quickly condemned by politicians and in the media, including from Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
Wallace told viewers after Trump’s speech, “This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it. He hasn’t won these states, nobody is saying he’s won the states. The states haven’t said that he’s won.”
The Fox anchor added later, “There may be a question as to how long you can continue to accept ballots. But there’s no question that all these states can continue to count votes for days. They don’t have to certify for weeks who has won the state. That was what happened in Florida back in 2000.”
Wallace continued:
“I don’t know if [Trump] literally meant that he’s going to try to stop the counting of the vote. But I would think that would be extremely inflammatory and frankly, I don’t think it’s something that the courts would allow.”
Chris Wallace: "This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it. He hasn't won these states … the president doesn't get to say he won states … there's no question that all these states can continue to count votes." pic.twitter.com/iquygEE39Y
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 4, 2020
During his speech in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Trump told the small crowd gathered at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
He continued, “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
The president took the stage after all polls in the United States had closed. Many states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were still counting votes with the lead tipping between Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Donald Trump as different counties came in across those states.