The President’s Damaging Lie

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When President Trump took to the podium in the White House briefing room Thursday evening to give a statement on the election count, he lied about the legality of the votes against him in key battleground states and called into question the integrity of poll workers, laying a conspiracy at the feet of Democrats. Both the Republican establishment and the conservative news media have been split in their responses to his claims. Inside the White House and the Trump campaign, there is shock at the direction the contest has taken — many in his camp believed that a win was certain. Guest: Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: In a stunning appearance in the White House, Mr. Trump lied about vote-counting, conjuring up a conspiracy of “legal” and “illegal” ballots being tabulated and claiming without evidence that states were trying to deny him re-election.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babbaro. This is The Daily.
0:10.9	Today, as Joe Biden takes a growing lead in the Electoral College, President Trump
0:17.6	falsely claims that the election is being stolen from him.
0:21.8	Maggie Hayburn on his dangerous strategy.
0:32.4	It's Friday, November 6.
0:39.0	Maggie, it feels like we just watched something historic and dark and profoundly alarming
0:47.1	just happened at the White House. Michael, that's right. We just witnessed something scary
0:51.6	at the White House. We just witnessed something that could have profound impacts on how voters
0:56.3	feel about the democratic process, about their trust in the sanctity of the electoral process,
1:02.0	and something that could have profound implications long after Donald Trump is out of office.
1:07.9	And so I just want to start by acknowledging that this will be a challenging event to talk about
1:13.1	and cover journalistically, but we're going to do it as important. And we're not going to play
1:18.0	much of this news conference that the president gave because it was defined by lies and misinformation.
1:27.4	But I do want to talk about what the president was trying to do here. And I wonder if you can walk
1:33.3	us through what happened tonight. So Michael, the president announced a burpload that he would be
1:38.8	giving a statement from the White House briefing room after being out of view all day. He was working
1:43.7	in the Oval Office. He took to the podium in the briefing room about an hour after they announced it.
1:50.5	Thank you very much. Thank you. And he looked downcast. He looked
1:55.0	ejected. He had something in his hand that were some notes that he later read from.
2:01.5	And to the extent that AIDS knew what he was going to say, they said that he was going to talk about
2:07.6	polls and polling site issues in various states. But most of them didn't really know what he was
2:12.8	going to say. Good evening. I'd like to provide the American people with an update on our efforts
	...

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