Trump Supporters Begin To Accept Biden Victory - 'With Reservations'
Robert Reed says he will always believe the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. The retired police officer believes fraud marred the vote, no matter how many courts rejected that claim.
Still, a day after the Electoral College cast 306 votes for Joe Biden, the ardent Trump supporter from the suburbs of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was ready to move on.
“I think it’s pretty much over,” Reed said of Trump’s ongoing quest to overturn the results of the election. “I trust the Electoral College.”
For weeks, Trump has argued that his victory was stolen and the contest was rigged.
But now that Republican officials, including Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, are acknowledging Biden as president-elect, many Trump voters across the country seem to be doing the same.
Interviews with voters, along with fresh surveys of Republicans, suggest their doubts about the integrity of the vote remain. But there is far less consensus on what should be done about it.
For some, like Reed, the Electoral College vote was the clear end of the process. Others have vowed to continue to protest with demonstrations like one in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. And some said they hoped GOP leaders would press for more investigations.
They are people like Scott Adams, a retiree and Trump voter living in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, who said he accepts Biden’s victory — but “with reservations.”
Adams said he’s heard too much about irregularities in the vote count to trust the election’s outcome and doesn’t think he’ll ever know the true results.
But Adams doesn’t think the election was rigged enough to change the outcome, even if he believes it was “rigged enough that it should be questioned more.” He’d like to see more investigations.
Republicans across the country — from local officials to governors to Attorney General William Barr — have said there is no evidence mass voter fraud affected the outcome of the election.
Trump and his allies brought a flurry of lawsuits, but nearly all have been dismissed by judges. The Supreme Court denied requests to hear a pair of cases aimed at overturning the outcome of the election in key battleground states.
Still, many Trump voters expressed disbelief that Trump could have lost, given the huge crowds he drew to his rallies. Some said their suspicions were heightened by the establishment media’s reluctance to cover allegations of fraud. And they repeatedly pointed to the slow vote count as evidence that something could have gone awry.
“Something’s not right here,” Reed, 61, said.
“I’ll always believe that it was stolen from him. I’ll really never be able to have peace of mind that it wasn’t,” he said.
Others were less willing to go along.
“I don’t trust that result. I think that the election was a fraud. I think the election was stolen. I don’t know how anybody could not think that. All you have to do is look at the results,” Katherine Negrete, a teacher living in Peoria, Arizona, said.
Negrete, 55, is among those who holds out hope that Trump can win if the Supreme Court intervenes or Congress chooses to accept an alternative slate of Trump electors from several states.
“I don’t know what we can do about that if we don’t have the courts that stand up for us,” she said.
“If we don’t have an attorney general that will stand up and say, ‘This was wrong and we need to investigate it.’ What are we supposed to do? Do we need to fight brother against brother? It’s crazy.”
A Quinnipiac University poll from earlier this month found that 38 percent of registered voters, including 77 percent of Republicans, said they believe there was widespread fraud in the presidential election.
And a recent Fox News poll found 36 percent of voters, including 77 percent of Trump voters, believe the election was stolen from Trump. However, the same poll also found that about 8 in 10 voters overall, and about half of Trump voters, said they will at least give Biden a chance as president.
Matt Vereline, 52, a member of the pro-Trump group “Long Island Loud Majority” is not in the mood for reconciliation.
Vereline, who lives in Bohemia, New York, is convinced “there was a lot more voter fraud than we know about,” though he’s not sure whether it changed the outcome.
But that won’t keep him from rallying around what he sees as an injustice. After all, that’s what Democrats did to Trump, he says.
“Did they not cry for four years about Russian collusion, which wasn’t proven? So now I’m going to to cry about voter fraud for four years,” he said.
“They didn’t accept it. Why should I accept Biden? I know I can’t do nothing about it. I know a rally is not going to change the course of who gets elected president. It’s whatever will be will be. But if my friends want to get together and complain about it in a peaceful way and voice our opinions, I’m going.”
Others believe Biden won fair and square. Steve Volkman, a Republican who works in construction in Mesa, Arizona, said he accepted a Biden victory weeks ago.
“I voted for Trump, but people gotta get over it,” Volkman said. “For sure, [Biden] won the majority vote — landslide. To me, it’s already over.”
Catherine Templeton, a South Carolina Republican who served in former Gov. Nikki Haley’s administration, said that, despite the level of support for Trump in red states like her own, she felt sure voters would be willing to accept Biden as president.
“Obviously, South Carolina supports President Trump, but I think you’ll see when Republicans don’t get their way, they move on,” Templeton said. “It’s time to move on.”
It remains to be seen how lingering concerns over the integrity of the vote will affect turnout in future elections. Both parties have been focused on Georgia, where a pair of runoff elections will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Denise Adams, 50, said she has her doubts about “questionable activity” in the general election. But she turned out to vote early on Monday in Kennesaw, a suburb northwest of Atlanta.
“I don’t want to lose our freedoms,” she said. “We’re losing our rights and freedoms in our country.”
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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