Biden defeats Trump
November 7, 2020
By HARRIET RAMOS
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States. Trump refuses to concede.
After flipping Pennsylvania, a state Trump won in 2016, Biden reached 273 electoral votes, surpassing the 270 needed to become president.
“It’s time for America to unite,” he said in a statement. “And to heal.”
Trump is the first incumbent president since George H. W. Bush to lose re-election and said in a statement he would “not rest until the American people have the honest vote count they deserve.”
Trump, who claimed victory early Wednesday morning in spite of nine states that still had a significant number of uncounted ballots, has continually asserted the race was “stolen.”
As the voting process continued Wednesday, Trump supporters chanted “Stop the count” outside of a ballot-tallying center in Detroit. Biden supporters held protests demanding a full vote count. Demonstrators in favor of Biden held a peaceful protest at Dallas City Hall Wednesday night.
Earlier this week Trump filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Michigan to stop the counting of ballots. Both of those pleas were rejected by judges in those states, as was another lawsuit in Georgia alleging some mail-in ballots were received after the deadline.
Trump has also declared his intention to file a lawsuit in Nevada alleging mail-in ballot voter fraud.
Biden continued to ask his supporters to be patient throughout the ballot-counting process.
“No one is going to take our democracy away from us,” he said Thursday on Twitter. “Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles and endured too much to let that happen.”
At 77, Biden is the oldest president elected to the White House.
