Report: Biden team plans to assert control and declare victory as soon as media calculates he’s won

As President Donald Trump continues to face accusations that he may not accept a loss in the presidential race, a new report suggests Joe Biden will be looking to declare victory early and begin staffing immediately.

A report from Axios says Biden’s campaign strategy is to address the American people the night of the election from Wilmington, Delaware. 

The report, which cites multiple advisors to the former vice president, says Biden will be addressing the nation as “its new leader,” if media organizations are predicting him to be the winner. 

This comes a day after Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Mason told reporters that the Biden camp will not pay attention to what Trump says and even suggested the president could “declare victory in an unfounded way.”

“We’re not really concerned what Donald Trump says on election night because what he says might have nothing to do with the reality of it,” she said. “We’re not going to get distracted by it.”

O’Malley Mason added that “under no scenario” could Trump be declared the winner on the night of the election, citing the millions of mail-in ballots, as well as early votes as factors that will stall the process. 

Trump himself has said he expects a winner to be announced on Election Night, and he’s slammed states accepting mail-in ballots days after the polls close. 

Media projections are not always decisive: in the highly contested 2000 presidential election, many initially suggested Al Gore was victorious over George W. Bush, but the Republican nonetheless claimed victory while the Democrat hesitated. Axios reported that the Biden team had learnt the lesson.

The suggestion of Biden addressing the nation on Election night as president-elect based on media reports has set off conservative critics, who see a double standard in media coverage of Trump’s willingness to accept results versus Biden’s. 

“Because CNN should determine the Presidency? Solid liberal logic here,” Trump-supporting actor James Woods tweeted in response to Axios’ report. 

“Ah ok, so declaring victory prematurely is good now,” the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams wrote. 

President Trump has said on numerous occasions he thinks it’s “terrible” for ballots to be tabulated long after Election Day, and he would like a result on the same night.

“I think it’s a terrible thing when people or states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over,” he said. “I think it’s terrible when we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election in a modern-day age of computers.”

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