United States. And now, what's Trump going to do?

Democrat Joe Biden is elected the 46th President of the United States, according to the tally of CNN, AP or Fox News. He won Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona to reach a total of 290 primary voters, out of the 270 needed to get to the White House.

Donald Trump still refuses to admit his defeat. He has filed lawsuits in 6 states where the vote gap is very small. Several Republicans, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, are asking him to accept his defeat.

The president-in-office still refused on Sunday, November 8, to concede defeat to Joe Biden and even said he was ready to lead the fight to “break the truth.” The American press is looking into what the unpredictable White House chief could do in the ten weeks he has left in office.

Will he concede victory, thus making the difficult and humiliating choice that all his predecessors who were beaten had to make? Or will he continue to wage a scorched earth battle in an attempt to reverse the [election] results and poison the well water as Biden takes over power? Asks the Boston Globe on Sunday, November 8.

Hours after the US media announced his Democratic rival's victory on Saturday, Donald Trump seemed unfazed. In a statement, broadcast by the US news agency AP, he said he refused the election results: “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to pretend to be the winner and why his media allies are trying to help him: they don't want the truth revealed” (...) the simple fact is that this election is far from over. Starting Monday, we will campaign to have our case recognized in court, to ensure that election laws are fully respected and that the legitimate winner is recognized.”

Trump faces a wall of problems

In reality, “Trump may have personal reasons for clinging to power at all costs,” the Boston Globe writes. “He faces hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, prosecution and a criminal investigation in New York [on allegations of financial fraud].”

Law professor Lawrence Douglas, interviewed by the Massachusetts daily, can easily imagine him working hard to create damage between now and the handover of power with Joe Biden, scheduled for January 20. Especially since he has shown on several occasions that he is ready to 'foment discord and chaos'.

The man who is now called a “lame duck” which traditionally refers to a president in the United States at the end of his term when his successor is already elected but not yet in office. Trump “has ten weeks to take revenge on his political opponents, grant forgiveness to his friends and make life difficult to President-elect Joe Biden, who beat him in the polls and turned him into something he hates: a loser,” writes The Los Angeles Times.

A Desperate President's Options

If, as he has already experienced, the judiciary may limit the scope of his presidential decrees, he has more latitude in foreign relations, according to experts consulted by the Californian newspaper. “This is probably, after his four years in office, the most revealing episode of his character,” fears Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official behind a highly critical anonymous letter from the president published two years ago by the New York Times.

The Los Angeles Times also claims that Trump could issue presidential executive orders to animate his political base in the run-up to a White House race in 2024 or to advertise if he were to create a media company. But, the daily points out, all these texts can be cancelled by Biden once he is fully in power on January 20.

Sources: Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times & The Associated Press