Trump’s Supreme Court vow was what he planned all along

Now Trump is going to activate his legal army. Speaking from the East Room of the White House shortly after 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, he confusingly proclaimed he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stop “all voting,” because “we don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.” It was unclear how he would do that, or what legal arguments he could muster.

We warned you it might happen. So buckle up and get ready for what could be days of uncertainty. POLITICO’s Scott Bland breaks down what to watch for as votes continue to be tallied in one of the most consequential presidential elections in U.S. history.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight,” Trump told hundreds of rowdy supporters. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people. We won’t stand for it. We will not stand for it.”

Trump then declared, falsely, that there had been election “fraud,” and proclaimed, again falsely, that he had won the election.

“This is a fraud on the American public,” he said. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”

His decision to discredit the election results before the ballots are fully counted in several battleground states shattered yet another norm in American politics as he closes out his first — and perhaps only — term in office. But given the months Trump spent demeaning the electoral system, it was an unsurprising move.

“He’s not going to go gently into the night,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Trump will look for ways to contest it because for him everything is at stake in this election. He goes from being the most powerful person in the world to being an outlaw figure.”

On Tuesday night, Trump did win important states like Florida, Iowa and Ohio. But Biden won Arizona, while the race was too close to call in key states the president flipped in 2016, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Officials in Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee said they would continue to count votes Wednesday as they work through a backlog of paper ballots. Trump’s team is bracing for a delay in results until the end of the week.

In a statement, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon described Trump’s Supreme Court vow as “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect.”

“Nearly 100 million people cast their ballot before Election Day in the belief — and with the assurances from their state election officials — that their ballot would be counted,” she wrote. “Now Donald Trump is trying to invalidate the ballot of every voter who relied on these assurances.”

Trump’s allies on Tuesday night had urged him to go on the offensive, get on TV and frame the debate on his terms in the coming days, according to two Republicans.

They want him to deliver speeches or headline rallies so he can declare he’s on the path to winning the presidency, hindered only by inaccurate projections and fraudulent mail-in ballots. Trump supporters were particularly upset that the networks took so long to declare Trump the winner in Florida. Later, Trump’s allies lashed out when Fox News called Arizona for Biden, well ahead of other networks that made the same call hours later.

But there was some early pushback from some Republicans who were wary of Trump’s bellicose vows to take the election to the courts.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who regularly speaks to the president, said on ABC that it was the wrong move by Trump, legally and politically. “There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight,” he said. “There just isn’t.”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum echoed the sentiment on CNN. “I was very distressed by what I just heard the president say,” he said. “The idea of using the word ‘fraud’ being committed by people counting votes is wrong.”

But others who know Trump say they were not surprised by his decision to fight the election.

“He’s never going to say, ‘I lost fair and square,’” said Jack O’Donnell, who worked for Trump as president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino. “The fighting allows him to deny the reality of the loss. His ego and narcissism doesn’t allow him to say, ‘I’ve lost.’ I believe he will maintain forever that it was unfair.”

Trump offered some self-reflection about this trait Tuesday morning at his campaign headquarters, telling reporters: “Winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me it’s not.”

A record number of voters cast their ballot by mail this year as Americans avoided the polls due to the global pandemic. But Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to send in a ballot instead of showing up on Election Day.

Meanwhile, Democrats pushed to have at least 10 states extend their deadlines to accept mail-in ballots, fearful that a beleaguered U.S. Postal Service might struggle to deliver the surge of ballots on time. During the primaries, voters lodged complaints about a delay in receiving remote ballots. And voting experts cautioned that ballots sent close to Nov. 3 might arrive too late to be counted, even if they were sent on time.

Yet Republicans swiftly challenged these changes, arguing local election officials and judges were changing the rules too close to an election. And they insisted there was no way to prove all of the late-arriving ballots were mailed prior to the election.

Trump has more than once predicted the election would end up at the Supreme Court, using it as one of his rationales for moving swiftly to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat less than a month before the election. Trump ultimately succeeded, pushing through Amy Coney Barrett, who was sworn in last week, ensuring a 6-3 conservative majority that may help Trump in any election-related cases.

The margin of victory in a handful of states is expected to be small enough that late ballots could determine who wins.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, criticized Trump for trying to shut down the election before ballots were counted.

“Let’s be clear: This is a partisan attack on Pennsylvania’s elections, our votes, and democracy,” he wrote on Twitter. “Our counties are working tirelessly to process votes as quickly AND as accurately as possible. Pennsylvania will have a fair election and we will count every vote.”

Biden acknowledged those mail-in votes when he spoke early Wednesday morning before Trump, urging his supporters to remain patient as the ballots were counted.

“We believe we’re on track to win this election,” he said in a brief appearance in Wilmington, Del. “We knew because of the unprecedented early vote and mail-in vote, it’s gonna take awhile. We’re gonna have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished … but we’re feeling good.”

While Republicans won some legal challenges on mail-in ballot deadlines, they lost some, most notably in Pennsylvania, which is allowing a three-day extension for remote votes to arrive and still be counted.

On Tuesday, Trump’s team was working on legal challenges to block ballots that arrive after Election Day, even though they already asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the Pennsylvania extension with no success. Meanwhile, Democrats pushed for states to wait for outstanding ballots.

“He doesn’t want to be obliterated, so he’s going to fight being labeled a loser,” said Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio. “And he sees these fights, these spectacles, as part of the package of entertainment he sells to the public.”