the times | Saturday November 14 2020 2GM 49Biden’s win grew yesterday with the
Chinese foreign ministry offering its
congratulations and saying it
“respected the choice of the American
people”. Several nations have yet to
comment, including Russia, North
Korea, Brazil and Mexico.
Barack Obama, 59, who is promoting
his book about his presidency, told CBSin an interview: “[Mr Trump’s] margin
of victory over Hillary Clinton wasn’t
greater than Joe Biden’s margin over
him. But if you are listening to some of
the talk radio that Trump voters are
listening to, if you’re watching Fox
News, if you’re getting these tweets,
those allegations are presented as facts.
So you’ve got millions of people outthere who think, ‘Oh yeah, there must
be cheating because the president
said so’.”
Separately, more than 130 Secret
Service staff assigned to the White
House have gone into quarantine
because of coronavirus exposure,
straining the agency’s resources.
Kamala Harris interview, MagazineRohingya face confinement
on flood-prone island
Page 50Campaigners from both the Republi-
can and Democratic parties are
descending on Georgia, where control
of the Senate will be decided.
The southern state will hold run-off
contests for both its seats on January 5.
As it stands, the Republicans hold 50
seats and the Democrats 48; if the
Democrats can win both the run-off
contests, the Senate will be evenly split
— but the casting vote of Kamala
Harris, as vice-president, would give
them ultimate control. That would
enable Joe Biden to pursue a more left-
wing agenda in the White House.
Both parties are unsure who will ben-
efit more from the bitter election after-‘Attila the Hun’ takes on Democrat pastor in fight for Senate
math. Mr Biden is highly likely to cam-
paign in the state as president-elect,
and Republicans are desperate for Mr
Trump to visit too, for fear that many of
his supporters will not turn out for a
lower-profile senate election.
The first of the contests features two
politicians with radically different
backgrounds: Kelly Loeffler, 49, the
Republican incumbent, and the Rev
Raphael Warnock, 51, her challenger.
Ms Loeffler is a multimillionaire
mega-donor who owns the At-
lanta Dream, the state’s foremost
women’s basketball team. Herhusband, Jeffrey Sprecher, 65, is chair-
man of the New York Stock Exchange,
and the couple were accused of insider
trading this year when they sold
$3.1 million of shares after a private
briefing for senators about the devasta-
tion the coronavirus could wreak. Ms
Loeffler denied any wrong-
doing and was cleared by
the Senate ethics com-
mittee.
Mr Warnock is the
senior pastor of Ebe-
nezer Baptist Church
in Atlanta, where
Martin Luther King
preached for eight
years before his
assassination.Ms Loeffler has spent much of the
past year fighting off a fellow Republi-
can for the right to take on Mr War-
nock, with adverts professing herself to
be “more conservative than Attila the
Hun”. This week she turned her atten-
tion to Mr Warnock, accusing him of
celebrating “anti-American hatred”,
being a Marxist and calling the police
thugs and gangsters. Embracing the
new national dimension to the cam-
paign, the advert concluded: “Saving
the Senate is about saving America
from that!”
Mr Warnock, in turn, released an ad-
vert condemning Ms Loeffler’s at-
tempts to stoke “division”, adding:
“While she’s busy calling me names, let
me tell you where I stand,” before talk-ing about expanding healthcare and in-
creasing wages. “Kelly Loeffler may
think that’s radical. I think it’s common
sense.”
The other race pits David Perdue, 70,
a businessman who has held the seat for
the Republicans since 2015, against Jon
Ossoff, 33, a journalist who spent much
of his twenties living in London. Mr
Ossoff attracted attention in recent
weeks when a video clip of a debate in
which he called Mr Perdue a “crook”
went viral.
Winning either seat is a tall order for
the Democrats even though Mr Biden
appears likely to become the first Dem-
ocratic presidential candidate to win
the state since Bill Clinton in 1992 —
subject to a recount.Henry ZeffmanKelly Loeffler, the Republican
senator, accused her rival of
“anti-American hatred”Twisted ideology
of incel devotees
Page 52cybersecurity chief tells Trump
and Phoenix, Arizona, right, as part of a “Stop the Steal” protest that makes its way to Washington today for a mass rallyLoyalists fear telling it
straight will kill careers
Analysis
P
resident
Trump is
“like a
heavyweight
champion
who is behind on
points” but still
“looking for the
knockout he knows is
a long shot”,
according to an ally
who phoned him
yesterday (David
Charter writes).
The fact that the
private conversation
was revealed by the
TV personality
Geraldo Rivera
suggested an effort by
those close to Mr
Trump to coax him
towards accepting the
inevitable, tempered
by the need to soothe
his hurt feelings.
Mr Trump “seemed
particularly aggrieved
by the savage attacks
on his presidency
from the minute he
was elected”, Rivera
tweeted. “He told me
he was a ‘realist who
would do the right
thing’ when all the
legitimate votes have
been counted.”
This lifted the lid on
behind-the-scenes
discussions that are
consuming Mr
Trump’s time, but
there has been a
striking absence of
senior Republicans
willing to dispute his
wild allegations of
fraud.
Officials who do so
risk the sack.
The closest anyone
in the senior echelonsof the party has come
this week to speaking
out against Mr Trump
was a plea from a
group of half a dozen
senators for him to
allow intelligence
briefings for the
Biden team, all the
while insisting that
this was not an
admission of defeat.
Mike Pence, the
vice-president, has
kept quiet publicly,
but Mike Pompeo, the
secretary of state, has
actively encouraged
Mr Trump’s resistance
to the election verdict,
saying that there
would be a “smooth
transition to a second
Trump
administration”.
What they have in
common is
presidential ambition.
Other vocal backers
of Mr Trump’s tactics
include Ted Cruz, a
senator from Texas,
and Marco Rubio, a
senator from Florida,
both of whom also
have their eyes on the
Republican
nomination in 2024.
Almost no one who
is planning to run
again as a Republican
— whether as
president, senator or
dog-catcher — wants
to risk alienating the
president’s support
base. Look at what
happened to Al
Schmidt, city
commissioner for
Philadelphia, after he
said he had seen no
evidence of fraud, as
alleged by the Trump
legal team in itssearch for
vote-rigging: the
dreaded presidential
tweet soon followed
calling him a “RINO”,
or Republican In
Name Only.
A tweet highlighting
Trumpian displeasure
will certainly be used
against any
Republican with
hopes of high office
by their opponents
during the primary
process for choosing
the party’s candidates.
No one wants to
become the next
Rino.
How long can this
go on? Individual
state deadlines for
certifying the election
vote are approaching,
but some are still
three weeks away. Mr
Trump, by all
accounts, wants to
prevent certification
in enough states to
keep his hopes alive.
Given the fervour of
his millions of loyal
supporters, and the
influence he will
retain, perhaps for
years, over the
direction of the party
and its choice of
candidates, some
senior Republicans
may be speaking
behind the scenes
with the Biden team,
but who will dare to
speak out in public
against Mr Trump?
There is a vacancy
for the anti-Trump
moderate in the 2024
Republican
presidential race.
But are there any
votes in it?AMY HARRIS/REX; JIM URQUHART/REUTERS