(CN) — A day after Joe Biden officially secured enough electors to become president, outgoing President Donald Trump held a “Victory Rally” in Georgia Saturday night, uttering a multitude of false claims, including that he won the state.
“You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” Trump said to the assembled mostly unmasked crowd shouting “Four more years!” in the southern Georgia city of Valdosta. Biden won the state by about 12,000 votes. The election results were certified Nov. 20.
The president traveled to the Peach State in a show of support for Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of January’s runoff election. He again claimed the election in Georgia was “rigged.”
"They cheated and they rigged our presidential election ... and they're gonna try to rig this election too,” he said.
Trump again stated without evidence that ballots cast for him were thrown out by election workers. At one point, the president claimed he won the 2020 election by a larger margin than the 2016 election. The president received more than 74 million votes, less than Biden who had over 81 million. He also lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“They’re trying to convince us that we lost. We didn’t lose,” Trump said. “They found a lot of ballots, to be nice about it, and they got rid of some too. The 74, let me tell you, the 74 could have been higher.”
Amid chants of “Stop the steal” from the crowd, President Trump took the opportunity to take a shot at Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who Trump reportedly spoke to Saturday morning to ask to subvert the state’s election results.
“Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew what the hell he was doing,” Trump said.
Trump said ‘we have so much evidence” of voting fraud, even though his lawyers have failed to successfully convince a court of that among several lawsuits.
Of his post-election lawsuits, his campaign has only won one and lost 46. His one victory was a case in Pennsylvania that challenged the moving of a deadline for voters to provide missing identification information. His legal challenges have failed in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The president at times wavered between falsely claiming victory and unwittingly acknowledging his loss.
“What we would have done in the next four years... and now we’re giving it all away,” he said.
Early in the speech, President Trump made reference to his wins in Ohio and Florida, inferring that he lost the election despite winning those two states.
"I think they say that if you win Florida and if you win Ohio, in history you've never lost an election. This has got to be the first time,” he said.
At one point, he said he would bow out if he believed he had lost the election.
"If I lost, I'd be a very gracious loser," he said. "If I lost, I would say I lost."
Trump spoke only a little about the Senate runoff election, urging his supporters to vote in January, calling it the “most important congressional runoff, probably in American history.”
“This election was rigged, and we can’t let it happen to two of the most respected people in Washington,” he said.
Some of his Republican supporters have called for a boycott of the runoff election, buying into his claims that the election will be rigged. The GOP risks losing its majority in the Senate if both seats are lost to the Democrats.
Trump also made a number of false claims regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, including that people who had already been infected were immune to future infections.
Biden, who has already named some of his top cabinet picks, will be inaugurated Jan. 20.
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