donald trump speaking just a short while
ago at the white house where he
is watching the results come in he
addressed supporters
um and said frankly they had won
with many states still undeclared he
called the election process a major
fraud on our nation and said that he
plans to contest it
in the supreme court let's listen
so we'll be going to the u.s supreme
court
we want all voting to stop
we don't want them to find any ballots
at
four o'clock in the morning and add them
to the list okay
[Applause]
and let's bring in now our team coverage
jessica guino hecht joins us she's a
professor of american history
at berlinsbury university and richard
walker
from dws also joining us here in the
studio richard
respond to what donald trump just said
there is it accurate
um well no i mean he said that we want
voting all voting to stop in this
country and voting has stopped
um so i mean what he's trying to do is
to undermine
uh uh belief in
the electoral system as it is playing
out
he's trying to throw into question the
validity
uh particularly of early votes which
were cast
particularly in these close states where
there's no
uh announced result being called yet
he's trying to throw those into doubt
because
presumably he believes that the majority
of those early votes which
uh projections do seem to bear out
uh are votes for joe biden and rather
for him
rather than for him so essentially what
he would like to do
is to kind of have all kind of counting
halted
in these uh states because in these
crucial states of for instance
wisconsin of pennsylvania and michigan
if you look at the latest
tallies so far trump is ahead in those
states
but those are states that haven't yet
really or until today
started counting the great number of
early votes which had come in either by
mail or
or in person and he would you know
ideally for him they would sort of make
a cut now
to say okay the votes that were cast
today
were for trump he wins the state um so
this is cueing up a legal battle
it's not a huge surprise you know there
were concerns that this would happen
trump has been threatening it for some
time but it's a reality now this is
what's going to happen
put this into the broader context for us
jessica have we seen this before
well we have but maybe not in living
memory so to speak um
i mean the profile of trump is
in many ways a profile of a president
who could have well survived and in fact
been very successful in the 19th century
as well
um the campaign that we have seen you
know with its slander its directness its
public display
of really deep-seated animosity is also
something that we've seen quite a bit
in american history notably in the 19th
century we're just not used to these
types any
um anymore elections have been closed
well the first couple of elections in
american history were
terribly close much more maybe than what
we've seen what we're seeing now
what we've seen four years ago or 20
years ago
what's new here and i think this is
really historic is the mix
it's kind of the recipe put all of this
together you know the slanders campaign
the narcissistic president the deep
division of the country
um and you get what you're seeing right
now but in a highly explosive brand
that is actually very very dangerous and
i think what we really have to be aware
of that
all of this didn't matter as much as
long as the presidency was not a very
powerful position
19th century presidents weren't very
powerful but they are now and so if you
have a 19th century candidate and you
put him on a 21st century position
you're in for a dynamic relationship and
and not i mean 19th century america also
wasn't very powerful
in the 21st century america is um
you know it's the superpower that
affects everyone around the world so
you know if if america is in for a
period of really deep political
instability even deeper than we've
already witnessed
over the last couple of months or even
four years you could say
that's destabilizing for the world what
is the potential for
sort of a worst case scenario would you
say richard because i mean we have seen
the images coming
across the country in the united states
we have seen shops boarded up we have
seen major landmarks boarded up for
example
um the nation seems to be bracing for
the worst
could we see that well it depends what
you call the worst case scenario
violence on the streets
protesters we're not at that stage yet
but it's
it's completely feasible we've already
seen violence on the street this year
we've seen people killed on the streets
of america this year
so why shouldn't that happen in these
circumstances i think you know there's a
very significant risk of that
that means that you know donald trump
and joe biden both have a very serious
responsibility
in how they manage this because they set
the tone why is the mood so tense
jessica
because the country's so divided i mean
if you think about past elections the
one that comes to mind the closest one
is 1860
and that's the one right before the
civil war the country is divided
you