Fox News anchor Chris Wallace criticized President Donald Trump after he said he would win the election and wanted to prevent further votes being counted as several key states have yet to be called.
Trump held an early morning press conference in which he stated he was “on the road to victory”, predicting that he would win states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.
Trump described the fact that he had not already been declared the winner as a “betrayal of the American public” and an “embarrassment” to the country.
Trump also said that he would go to the Supreme Court to stop counting the remaining votes so that any votes found at “4 a.m.” would not be found and would be “put on the list.
“We prepared to win this election, frankly, we won this election,” Trump said, cheering loudly. “This is a very great moment, this is a great fraud on our nation.”
Wallace condemned the President’s statements, which seemed to indicate that not all the votes in this election should be counted, although millions might still come through.
“This is an extremely combustible situation, and the president has just thrown a match on it,” Wallace said.
“He didn’t win those states, nobody says he won those states, the states didn’t say he won.
“This goes directly back to what Joe Biden said, which is that the president can’t say he won the states, the American people can say it, and state officials can explain it.
“This is an extremely combustible situation, and the president has just thrown a match in. He has not won these states…” – Chris Wallace, Fox News. #selection2020 #USElection pic.twitter.com/6CTAiw488L
– C.Erdmann / Berlin (@carsten_erdmann) November 4, 2020
Wallace also questioned whether Trump “literally” meant that he would go to the Supreme Court to stop the counting of the remaining votes.
“Vote to stop counting, yes, but vote counting? These states all have the option under state law, and the states routinely do so on election nights or early morning the day after the election, and it goes on for days.
“The question may be how much longer you can still accept ballots, but all these states can still count votes for days, they don’t have to confirm for weeks who won the states, as happened in Florida in 2000.
“Well, I don’t know if he meant literally that he was going to try to stop the counting of votes, but I think that would be extremely inflammatory and frankly I don’t think the court is going to allow that.
Pennsylvania is one of the key states where Trump has been in the lead since the early hours of Wednesday morning, but it’s still a long way from a conclusion because it takes so long for all postal ballots and absentee ballots to be accepted and then counted.
In the days leading up to election night Axios reported that Trump intends to announce the election results early if he is ahead.
Trump later denied the reports but said it was a “terrible thing” that the ballots could be collected in some states after election day, describing it as a “very dangerous, terrible thing.
Earlier that night, Twitter marked a tweet from Trump, claiming that the Democrats were trying to “steal” the election, as misleading.
