Also speaking just a short while ago, Let's have a listen.

This is a fraud on the American public.

This'd is an embarrassment to our country.

We were getting ready to win this election.

Frankly, we did win this election.

Eso We'll be going to the U.

S Supreme Court.

We want all voting to stop.

We don't want them to find any ballots at four o'clock in the morning and add them to the list.

Okay.

And Trump's claims of fraud have drawn strong condemnations, including from some in his own party, including Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who easily won re election.

On Tuesday, he criticized the president in a sharp word and tweet, saying, Stop, full stop.

The votes will be counted and you will either win or lose, and America will accept that patience is a virtue.

Let's get more on that in the state of the race.

We're joined here in the studio by Professor Philip Ayyoub, an international diplomacy expert and US political expert.

Welcome to the program, DWS Richard Walker is with us.

Richard is our chief international editor, and Richard, I'd like to turn to you and first asked for your reaction to what we just heard the US president saying, Also your reaction to the results that, um, Michael has been presenting.

If you look at both of those messages, it appears it appears as if the Republicans might be busting through that blue wall.

Those key states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan.

Um, can we assume that, or is it still too early?

Oh, it's it's far too early to say.

I mean, those crucial states that we've been talking about a lot tonight really do seem toe hold the key to this election.

And what makes it particularly, um, particularly kind of tense situation?

Um, is that Ah, the voting.

Ah, lot of the voting, particularly on the Democratic side, it is assumed, took place in the form of early voting in the weeks leading up to the election, even either by post or in person, Andi Donald Trump here is essentially trying to stop the vote counts in those states because he sees that in the vote tally on the day it looks like he's ahead.

But those states all have a process where they only start counting those early votes on the election day as well, so there's a huge amount of counting to get through.

It could be a day, two days, three days, even before we have a result there.

Andi.

I mean, I think that there are two really striking things that we just heard from the statement there from Donald Trump where he said on the one had.

Frankly, we did win this election.

As far as I am concerned, we already have one.

Well, it's not for him to decide whether the election has Bean one or not.

And then this point.

We want all voting to stop Voting has stopped.

It's the counting that's underway and it's the counting that he appears to want to stop, or at least to throw into doubt.

And this has, you know, either a serious democratic impact in undermining you know, the validity of people's votes that were cast in good faith.

But also it potentially sets up.

You know, a really crisis of legitimacy for the future president, almost whoever that is, because if Joe Biden gets elected, you know if you Joe Biden comes through, but what may be a prolonged legal battle, there will be many Trump supporters who believe Trump said it on Election Day.

This was a what did you say?

A massive fraud against the American people.

That is very dangerous.

Okay, Phil, I'd like to get your reaction to what?

We have just heard the US president say that he wants the voting to stop talk with us about the legitimacy of this election and the process.

What we're seeing happening now.

Yeah, I I find it really distressing those words.

I mean, there's nothing illegitimate about counting votes that is common in all states that you count votes.

There's nothing irregular about continuing to count after the night of the election.

The president has said for weeks now kind of being setting up the stage that he might question that I think going back to what Richard said, which is that due to the pandemic, we have a lot of states with mail in voting.

Ah, lot of folks who are doing the mail in voting.

Our Democratic voters, uh, also the president had encouraged his voters to turn out on Election Day, whereas the Democrats, more concerned and conscious of the covert pandemic, have said that mail in voting is a way to go so thes are, uh, you know, the president has set the stage for this, and there's no legitimacy at all to that kind of assertion that voting house or the counting house to stop tonight.

Richard, what sort of timeline could we be looking at?

Because, I mean, we have these three states where we can see already the battle forming Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

How long could it take before we have a result in that states and and And what is happening right now on the ground?

You think in terms of lawyers in terms of, you know, setting up for a battle on both sides?

Well, this has been in preparation for some time, and Donald Trump is being very transparent about it, even in recent days, but also in recent weeks, just sort of saying that he's lining up for a legal battle.

E there two steps.

Essentially, First, you know, there's this count taking place, and then there's the legal track on.

Do you know if there are legal challenges?

It's on a state by state basis, but it may end up with the Supreme Court.

You know there's a challenge, for instance, in Pennsylvania on a detail, whether votes that arrive after Election Day but a postmarked before Election Day, whether those could be counted.

The Republicans are challenging that on hoping that the Supreme Court will hear that and there could be multiple kind of state based challenges like that.

So it's very hard to say, I mean, the last time there was an election, you know, with this kind of legal wrangling around it was Florida, of course, in the year 2000 between George W.

Bush and on Al Gore on that took, um, correct me if I'm wrong, but that to pretty much to the end of the year, for the Supreme Court to come through with the decision.

And that was just Florida here.

We're talking potentially about multiple states.

Eso yeah, we could be in for quite a long period of uncertainty.

Phil.

What do you think the lessons are from back in 2000 and talk with us about how different the country is now?

Um, and the court especially, um now in the year 2020 Onda.

How we could potentially see things shaking out in the coming days.

Perhaps in the coming weeks.

Yeah, I think the environment is quite different.

I mean, obviously the divisiveness in the country is much stronger.

And back then you had two candidates that both, you know, committed to a very basic foundation of democracy, which is the peaceful transition of power, and that you know, the pretext of that.

With all of these messages from President Trump ahead of the election, also kind of disputing or signaling that he might not be comfortable with any result where he is not the winner is a very different kind of context that that, uh, than we had in in 2000, even though it was, of course, a, uh, a new election that was drawn out to the end of the year and ended up in the Supreme Court.

But it's it's a different context here in terms of what it means for democracy.

I think one thing that is gonna be very interesting.

We've already seen one response from a relatively little known Republican congressman.

But how, uh, not just how the court's going to respond to this.

Three courts, of course, have been increasingly politicized.

That's a long running process.

The Supreme Court itself has become increasingly politicized and has gained a significant conservative majority under Donald Trump now, but also how other Republicans respond to this.

So this, you know, relatively unknown congressman has will be scouring firm or reactions.

How much support does Trump have for going down this road?

What we've seen so far, you know, under the Trump presidency is that most off the Republicans in Congress have been behind him.

You know, they a lot of them didn't like him, still don't like him.

But they initially reluctantly, because they like the winner, you know, here, it's not, You know, we don't know whether he's a winner now.

And is this a point which mawr of some kind of bail on him?

What is Mitt Romney gonna say about this?

You know, some of these kind of like, sort of highly regarded, um, sort of kind of what you might call sort of true conservatives against the populist movement that Trump has brought it.

That's going to be really interesting because of his report.