TWENTY-SEVEN
Election night at the Trump White House began like other Trump parties over the previous four years: with fast food orders. Pizzas and bags of Chick-fil-A piled up in the Roosevelt Room. The Map Room, where Franklin Roosevelt tracked battles during World War II, was set up as the nerve center.
Trump’s family members and senior aides moved anxiously in and out, with Fox News playing on television screens set up around the West Wing.
In the months before the election, Trump systematically claimed the outcome would be rigged. If he didn’t win, the election would be stolen. It was his unless there was massive fraud.
On June 22, he had tweeted: “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!”
In his own Republican National Convention speech on August 27, Trump declared, “the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”
Early in the evening on November 3, Trump’s allies were buoyant. Trump won a host of red states by 8 p.m.—Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee, among others. By 11 p.m., he had picked up Missouri and Utah. Then, 19 minutes after midnight, the Associated Press called Ohio for Trump. Then Iowa, then Florida and Texas. Cheers went up in the East Room, where hundreds of supporters were gathered.
James Clyburn was nervous as he watched television from home. When Biden called to check in, Clyburn said he did not like what he was watching.
Biden was upbeat. He said his advisers knew that many states were behind on counting mail-in ballots. The Biden campaign had encouraged mail-ins, while Trump had been pushing in-person voting, he said, so the early numbers were always likely to lean toward the president.
“I think we’re going to be fine,” Biden said.
The mood in the Map Room was beginning to darken.
Three of Trump’s children—Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, his senior adviser—kept showing up and pestering aides. Eric asked for data his father could cite in a speech. He grew frustrated when told the numbers would continue to change. States were still counting.
Fox News’s decision desk called Arizona for Biden shortly before 11:30 p.m., stunning Trump’s crowd. Trump pressed his family members and advisers to tell the network to pull the call back. Fox refused, enraging the president, who said Fox News was now in on the steal.
Biden started to pile up wins. The Associated Press called Wisconsin and Michigan for him. Pennsylvania and Georgia, two of the night’s prizes, were too close to call. At 12:26 a.m., November 4, the electoral count was Biden 214, Trump 210, with both men likely hours away from nearing the necessary 270 electoral votes to win the election.
Shortly before 12:45 a.m., Biden took the stage in Wilmington. He predicted victory but did not declare it outright. The crowd was mostly parked in cars outside the Chase Center due to the social distancing rules. Drivers honked their horns.
“Your patience is commendable,” Biden said. “But look, we feel good about where we are. We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight, we believe we’re on track to win this election.” He urged patience as they waited for the mail-in vote and for every ballot to be counted.
At 2:30 a.m., November 4, as his leads in other states were slipping away, President Trump strode to a lectern in the East Room. He wore a dark suit, with a blue silk tie and flag lapel. The first lady, Melania Trump, and Vice President Pence were at his side. “Hail to the Chief” played loudly before he began his remarks in front of a wall of American flags and a crowd that had expected a celebration.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” he said. Trump’s tone was dismissive, indignant. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” He added, “So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“How the hell did we lose the vote to Joe Biden?” Trump asked Kellyanne Conway a few hours later, November 4. Conway, the veteran pollster, had left the White House in August but remained close to Trump.
Trump was refusing to concede publicly, but he seemed ready, at least privately, to acknowledge defeat.
It was the mail-in ballots, she said. Covid. Your campaign running out of money. The debates.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, upset. “It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s terrible.”
There were two ways to look at the returns. On one hand, Biden had won by 7 million votes—81 million to Trump’s 74 million. On the other, a switch of 44,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia would have given Trump and Biden a tie in the Electoral College.
A Washington Post analysis noted Biden ended up doing what Hillary Clinton could not in 2016: pick up some support from working-class Americans who rarely participated in politics. Some previously voted for Trump. In addition, Biden had generated strong turnout among traditional Democrats nationwide.
“These Trump-to-Biden voters were overwhelmingly concerned about covid-19, with about 82 percent rating it as a ‘major factor’ in their presidential pick,” the analysis concluded, based on exit polls.
Advisers tried to keep him positive.
Brian Jack, Trump’s 32-year-old political director from Georgia, who kept him updated on every member of Congress, briefed the president in his private dining room on November 5.
House Republicans had won a net of 10 seats, flipping 13 Democratic seats, and losing just three GOP seats, Jack said, running through the numbers. A record number of Republican women had been elected, bringing the total number of GOP women to over 25 in the House.
You helped them with tele-town halls, tweeted for them, Jack said. Trump was downbeat.
“Were they grateful?” he asked. “Were they thankful?”
Jack assured him they were.
Trump made dozens more phone calls in the following days, with many allies fervently insisting he had won. It was stolen right from you, many told him. We’re hearing crazy stories out of Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Some longtime allies then went on Fox News and kept up the drumbeat. Rigged. Fraud.
One of them was Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer. Once the hero of the Big Apple after the 9/11 attacks, he was now a combative regular in Trump’s orbit who regularly smoked cigars. He told the president that he needed a better strategy. He offered to help.
Trump stopped privately saying he lost the vote. And he gave Giuliani his blessing to start poking around.