ilk to manipulate since there's no way to spin infection rates and mortality figures if donald trump loses this election prepare to see some journalists claiming at least some of the credit calling it a victory for the 4th estate some of them will be justified to a certain extent there are news outlets that have been locking horns with the president for years producing some adversarial quality 'd journalism along the way but until 2020 they failed to really move the needle in fact fewer americans trust their news media today than in 2016 what it took to sink donald trump in the polls was covert 19 and the science hard data it doesn't lie and try as he might the president has no answer for that. it is a way to 100 g.m.t. it is the middle of the night to 3 am in washington d.c.

but that has not stopped president from from coming out to address his supporters at the white house this has been one of the most divisive and unpredictable u.s. elections in memory and even though trump initially trailed biden he quickly picked up electoral college votes there's no clear winner yet we have just learned that arizona is going to joe biden let's cross over to rob reynolds in los angeles in california he's following the returns on the west coast and rob we were speaking 56 minutes ago about the importance of arizona and then moments later the flip happened tell us more. yes and the important part is one of the important aspects is that this is a flip this is joe biden taking away a state that was won by president trump in 2016 and it's all the more remarkable because arizona has always been one of the most rock ribbed republican states in the union it is the home state of barry goldwater who

considered the founder of the modern conservative movement although some of the developments of that movement would probably shock the former senator from arizona the late senator from arizona barry goldwater. this state has gone democratic twice in its history once in 1988 when harry truman beat thomas dewey the 2nd time when in 1906 when bill clinton beat. bob dole rather resoundingly the numbers we have now with 80 percent 82 percent of the vote in is biden 51 and trump 46 percent also in arizona a flip of a important senate seat the democratic challenger mike mark excuse me mark kelly has beaten martha mick sally the incumbent republican who was appointed to

her seat to fill out the term of the late senator john mccain and i read mccain as well as having some impact in the outcome here in arizona because as many people are aware president from even before he became president rather a spoke rather insultingly of mccain derogatorily saying i don't like people who are. taken prisoner during war time and mccain of course was a decorated hero of the vietnam. war and spent many years in confinement in north vietnam and his widow cindy mccain came out a couple of weeks ago and said that she would be voting against donald trump so i think all of that had something to do with trump's loss in arizona as well as massive demographic changes it's a very rapidly growing state it has

a very large let tino and native american population and many many people have been moving to places like phoenix and flagstaff and tucson from other places around the country bringing their own brand of politics with them so all in all we have here you know something of a historic moment in american politics amidst all of the confusion the obscurity the uncertainty as to what is going to happen next at least we know one thing that arizona is no longer the solidly republican state it once was or we shall see how that factors into the final outcome time thing thanks very much robin is there in los angeles well both trump and biden have come out to speak in the last few hours we can go to our correspondent can be helped in my kind of standing by with us i mean there were nights my kind i was in wilmington delaware we're going live to him shortly but 1st let's go to our white house correspondent can be how can washington

d.c. and kimberly we heard from donald trump we've heard from him via tweet initially and then he came out and spoke at the white house basically accusing the democrats of trying to disenfranchise those voters who say you had voted for him. that's absolutely right the u.s. president claiming victory saying that what is being conducted right now is nothing short of an attempt to disenfranchise the votes of conservative americans who supported him in the 20 to 40 poll the president speaking from the east room of the white house told about 150 supporters that were assembled there that what they were had been doing was planning a victory party when they realized that suddenly the counting of ballots had been cut off so it could be so we were hoping to get a little bit of sound from donald trump but it will come to that middle bit in the

meantime so how does done what does that mean for the situation across the united states when don't trump is saying these things is a pretty fair brawl that this fear in the country as it is a lot of division and so forth how many concerns of there are about this i mean this is exactly what it was front. yes the clip that we were going to play essentially says that the u.s. president is accusing democrats of committing what he called fraud on our nation he says that we did win this election and what is happening he believes is that democrats are now trying to find ballots so he has said very clearly that he is planning to go to the supreme court now i can tell you that i have covered a contested election in the past it happened in 2000 and it involved one state the state of florida and ultimately it did get to the supreme court after

a lot of ballot counting it was election that was ultimately declared in december what makes 6 different and worse is the fact that we're talking about multiple states potentially so there could be multiple legal challenges and what makes it perplexing is that the u.s. president is talking about going straight to the supreme court what he's trying to do he says is halt the ballot counting because he has little confidence that with each passing day that he will win this election so what's unusual about this is that he is sort of skipping the process that we know is an avenue for a contested election it would involve couts recounts potentially involving the house of representatives voting but the president seems to be going straight to the supreme court it's unclear what the legal argument is going to be for doing so but the reason he wants to do that is because he is just freshly appointed a supreme court justice and shifted the balance of the court decidedly conservative

who does that favor donald trump if that is going to be ultimate decider of this election so that is the path that donald trump is choosing to take wary quickly what we should also point out though is that we know that there are going to be extensive legal battles both sides amassing a team of lawyers this is a surprise many people hoped it could be avoided if it appears here we are. head of the game we didn't have the total trump clip but we do know so let's have a little listen. this is a fraud on the american public this is an embarrassment to our country. we were getting ready to win this election frankly we did win this election sure we'll be going to the u.s. supreme court we want to. voting just. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning in them to live. can be quickly dave is

interesting was that because amongst all the states that he was listing that were on his side he was saying that arizona was still very much possible but that is not not now the case we know yeah and he's also been kind of characteristically donald trump going well i didn't need it anyway i don't really need arizona because i'm still going to win pennsylvania i'm going to win michigan i'm all these other states where we know it could be some time before the ballots are counted so donald trump was striking an optimistic tone but again there's no question that that last bothered him in fact we know so we are insiders at the white house including our senior white house producer chris sheridan have said very plainly that the president was curious to hear that his favorite news network fox news was calling the state of arizona for biden because this is certainly something that he felt should have been in his corner and of course we know now is not. thank you very much for that by with the as the morning draws on the let's go to come all summer you've got somebody obviously for i have found they don't want to say it again

because i've got another projection which just keeps the clock ticking if you like or the numbers ticking for joe biden certainly side of the rights right now 23213 and right up in the top northeast corner it is the state of maine that we are looking at. the projected winner in the state of maine is joe biden with 3 electoral college votes now bear with me while i get this absolutely correct in maine member this is one of the exceptions there are 4 electoral college votes vailable there 3 have gone to joe biden winning each district and then you have one left which is the northern part of maine which there is a belief that may go to donald trump so at the moment we can give 3. to joe biden and in the state of this race 3 votes is incredibly significant of course it is then just a reminder about what was it 10 minutes ago now we have this

a projected win in arizona for joe biden with 11 electoral college votes there in the important thing there was that that was the 1st state to flip all night long so what does it do to the map bring it back again and we'll talk a little bit more about scenarios now so that is our state of the race as that is 238 to 13 so let's say nevada by the needing 32 at this point to get over the line let's say he gets nevada which we would think that 6 so that takes him up to 244 at this point now 20 t. oh my gosh my math is just terrible at the moment it is 6 shy so then it becomes pennsylvania and michigan or georgia basically there are a lot more parts to $270.00 for joe biden at the moment than there are for donald trump don't trump wants to do it he is knocking at georgia and north carolina which

is likely i'd say north carolina is likely for president trump georgia probably yes as well though joe biden still in the race there but then president trump will still need pennsylvania and michigan and maybe one more as well there are more parts for joe biden at this stage and that is why those 3. electoral college votes which he's just picked up in maine nick i think are very important because it's just it's incremental at this stage baby steps in. a big a big one a pennsylvania or something hopelessly make a difference but either candidate will take absolutely everything they can get at the moment. there is a clear route for both it's clear route for bush but yes it's. donald trump's position is holding holding states he's just lost one remember arizona he might need to flip nevada and he'd need to hold onto his other states that he broke in in

2016 the blue wall as we keep talking about joe biden can now afford to lose one of those probably wisconsin and still do it with pennsylvania and michigan so it's just it's a little bit clearer for joe biden. i'm not going anywhere no. that's great thanks very much lead as cross to mike hanna who's in wilmington delaware joe biden's home states where he also spoke to supporters and might so we heard from president trump earlier and he was responding in fact to joe biden the former vice president who had been addressing his supporters tell us a little bit about what he had to. call the margins now are so slim that those 3 electoral college votes that we just heard about in may may well be the tipping point but just to put all of this into perspective there have been some one $130000000.00 votes tallied at this particular

point that leaves according to the projected amount of votes registered overall there's some $30000000.00 votes still out there so this competition is far from over and that's what joe biden said to his supporters when he arrived here at the convention center behind me at about half past midnight you made a brief speech in which he insisted that the supporters must be patient indicated that the results going to take a period of time he correctly said at that stage he was confident of getting arizona he made the assumption as well that he was doing exceedingly well in those blue states the blue wall michigan wisconsin pennsylvania about as kamala's pointing out there the passport by then it's. still much easier than the parts we're trying to achieve the presidency but this is going to take a while hence a call for patience but this is what joe biden had to say. i heard tell you night

we believe we're on track to win this election. because of the odd pressure down early vote in the mail in vote is going to take a while we're going to have to be patient until the hard work of talent votes is finished and then over to every vote is counted every ballot is counted. by our fear and europe. well there we heard from joe biden and they in turn over till every vote is counted and that is what will be happening in the days ahead the supreme court has already ruled that pennsylvania in particular has until friday at 5 pm to finish counting those absentee and postal votes now these are the key votes and importantly for joe biden and his campaign is

that throughout the selection the trend has been very clear as the results of come in is that postal and absentee votes have favored democrats the in person voting on the day voting as favored republicans now those votes still to be counted are the mail in absentee votes those are expected to favor the democrats so from that statistic alone it appears that joe biden is right to call for patients and his optimism may not be unfounded just as donald trump's claims of victory may be entirely premature. mike hanna in wilmington delaware thank you for that. let's speak to peter matthews who's a professor of political science at cypress college in the author of dollar democracy joins us now from los angeles peter so margins as mike was just saying

there are very very slim out there and meanwhile we have donald trump saying that the election is being stolen by joe biden saying just hold the faith how do you assess where we're at right now well it's absolutely slim at this point but there are many many votes that you know about 30 more on 1000000 votes to be counted and these states like michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania are critical and most of those votes in those states were cast through the mail or early in the ballot box the drop boxes they were the early votes and those were overwhelmingly democratic votes and that's what joe biden is actually correct in saying all are all holler on principle in the united states of america we believe in counting every vote everybody has to be balance that's why would that work like tradition and this is the 1st president the 1st presidential candidate mr trump present trump was saying that the election's over is the election day so it's over don't count the votes and came in even before the election it come about because we have early voting in that

statement states you can not count those you can't do that it's unconstitutional you know supreme court are in decided that they have that every right to pursue it state law quite you can count on friday and those votes are most are going to be democratic votes now mr trump could end up winning the election but he let every single be counted because that's the rule of law and all right what do you think this says about democracy in the united states and what are your concerns about how this might develop out on the streets. you know this is a real problem because a fact that our election system is it is state by state and that's how the country was founded as a federally confederation initially then the federation federal system but the original states were more importantly long powerful and they were came together as independent units for one union and so the states had the greatest amount of power over the actual electoral process the election that's up and states vary state by state in certain ways in terms of the details of how the votes are cast public and

so you should let the states have the perp or a preponderance of say here and only only once a while the supreme court will step in if there's something as untoward regarding federal constitutional principles but a transfusion but it's basically a vote counting and vote vote in itself with the state function and it's something that is it's produced disjointed results at times it did that in the back in 2000 there was controversy it needs to be streamlined horses need to be streamlined in my view and then also the question the electoral college many people say that we're going to need more because people are informed they can be informed through the media and they can have direct a marker of voting democracy of the people who sell choosing president as most democratic country do in their own in their own right we're still on this system of electoral college who are actually last present from wine in minority of the popular vote and so became present a majority vote or colored vote that's not a one person one vote democratic prince or so that needs to be looked at very carefully also yeah and peter as we've been hearing this all this could well come

down to pennsylvania the supreme court has ruled that pennsylvania has until friday to count all the votes but all the while we have 3 justices on the supreme court indicating that they they may yet revisit that decision could you see any scenario whereby the votes are not counted in pennsylvania. i would hope this doesn't come to place because it would be diligent my and the system too in the eyes of many voters especially liberals who cast those votes and don't get those votes counted that's egregious violation of democratic principle united states constitution that every person's vote has to count in fact we had a civil war about that when african-americans are a lot of both not be citizens and the united states had a civil war to settle that score it took many years beyond doubt to finalize it but now that everyone can both formally speaking who's eligible to vote you've got to count every vote and i hope not revisit this they've already made a decision to allow the pennsylvania rules to stand and i think the new court which

means you haven't added member present trouble judge or just as amy going to her that's clearly a system a situation where he's getting it personally and it was someone that he personally i wanted so i think the court that was the place when the election took place should be the court ruling that stands and that was the court was that let pennsylvania vote on it and so i don't think the president trying to try to appeal this on one tree i will do legal standing to appeal them so we have to look through the state courts and to state themselves become the controversy but the presence or leave this alone and let democracy work so you can feel like you really want to select the industry. yes 70 twists and turns to go yet in this election story pretty mathewson time being thanks very much to appreciate that you're well i tell you what is now become clear that the states that will decide this election are the last remaining ones in the midwest that's enough john hendren who's following them from chicago. once again it seems to come down to those blue wall states those are

the states that barack obama won in from pennsylvania in minnesota and in between are the key states of wisconsin and michigan all of those states wisconsin michigan and pennsylvania were democratic states that went for donald trump in 2016 they put him over the top michigan was won by just 10000 votes and the votes that are left to be counted are the votes in the early voting that happened before the election the democrats believe that those heavily tilt toward joe biden and that that will help put them over the top in the end and in wisconsin it's the urban votes that haven't yet been counted the biggest city milwaukee also can no show 'd the city of can osha has yet to be counted while the county around it has been counted and then there are those suburban in swing areas like door county which tends to vote for

the eventual winner those votes have yet to be counted and those are states that until donald trump was elected had not voted for a republican for president since the 1980s so it could be days before we hear what happens in michigan in wisconsin there is a law that says the poll workers have to stay there and count every vote until all the ballots are counted and the folks there have told us that they expect to have an answer early wednesday that is 567 in the morning that could be 11 greenwich mean time or slightly later than that so we're still waiting on those votes but in the end it comes down to the blue wall that decided it for obama decided it for trump and will decide likely this election as well well florida was a hotly contested state too and a big one and that vote for the i got to go is in miami who's got more from the.

when you look at where i'm standing now this is miami dade county and you look at how biden did among the latino vote here and it was extremely poor when you compare it to how hillary clinton did with the same community back in 2016 it seems to me 5 the president's push to paint joe biden as a socialist works we already knew that about a 1000000 of the cuban americans that lived in a city like this in miami would likely vote republican but it seems like a lot of latino and hispanic voters who didn't vote for trump last time did so this time now the margin by which trump won this state was still pretty slim in 2016 he won by about 112000 votes it's about 350000 this time around but the picture is very clear. this was a state that needed to keep to keep is the hopes alive in this presidential

election to get another 4 years in the white house 29 electoral call of college votes really do matter for the president. then all the really needed was texas a big state a lot of electoral votes and like florida they're all going to donald trump i mean here comes through seems used to be it was a tight race in texas. that's right it was a tighter than normal race with trump leading by about 6 percentage points even as the last results are still being reported and his win comes as no surprise here texas is one of the most deeply red states in the country having supported only republican presidential candidates for more than 4 decades so certainly narrowing margin of victory here in texas tonight is indicative that the state continues on its trajectory toward becoming a true swing state we've seen that driven by demographic changes in texas with more

latino voters more young voters immigrants turning out for democrats this year though that was not enough to overcome the texas rural fire wall that trump had been counting on he had predicted a tremendous victory here in texas and his supporters delivered a victory to him the big question now is given what we just heard the president say at the white house has prematurely declared victory saying that he would challenge any result that is adverse to him the question is how would some of his most fervent supporters in places like rural texas how would they react texas has counties that voted for trump looking at the returns now with more than 90 per cent margin of victory just imagine that these are some of the most deeply red counties in the country these are places where you might by militia of the right wing and so

there's certainly more concern and tension on the ground here as authorities have also have a right. then prepping for possible civil unrest as the tension continues here even as democrats in texas are celebrating the progress that they say in the growth of their base in this state who would kind of things of you seem. to be preparing for a potential civil unrest so make. sure we know that the police chief in austin texas which is the big the moat the brightest blue spot of democratic controlled area in the state they have been preparing for a civil unrest we know the president trying to remarks of course they happen in the middle of the night here around 1 am local time so it's still to be determined exactly how people may respond to that when they wake up in the mornings and hear it but there is cause for concern given the last week of campaigning we saw here

that did get contentious and even violent at moments there were incidents where a trump train a caravan of some 100 of his supporters tried to surround a biden campaign bus almost forcing it off a road the police had to get involved and there have been definitely clashes this far as a verbal altercation that i've seen here in houston outside of polling locations between supporters and democrats so in this state where democrats are normally so used to losing and republicans are so used to winning big the fact that this margin of victory is so close and of course the fact that trump has made his rather incendiary remarks from the white house that may not bode well come tomorrow morning heidi thanks very much did you cut through there in houston. let's move from texas to pennsylvania one of the states most likely to decide the presidential

election still don't know who's going to get it christine silly me in philadelphia for us and kristen you're right there in the thick of what could be the final count down states double trouble suggesting that she's pretty much got pennsylvania wrapped up but is it true while the vote totals that we have so far with about 74 percent of her exactly 74 percent of the votes being reported is donald trump leading 56 percent to joe biden's 43 percent that's about $700000.00 votes it's a substantial lead but to put that into perspective soon after donald trump all but declared victory here and around the country. governor tom wolfe of pennsylvania sent out a tweet pointing out that there are still 1000000 mail in ballots to be counted here in pennsylvania he says i promise pennsylvania's that we would count every

vote and that's what we're going to do he called this a partisan attack places that have yet to fully report their vote counts include urban centers like here in philadelphia where i am and pittsburgh which are strongly democratic. democrats also worth 3 times. submitted 3 times more mail in ballots than democrats did so it is still conceivable that joe biden could win here and this is actually the scenario that people were talking about and democrats were worried about that president trump would look like he was leading early on because he would do stronger do better with on the day voting whereas the democrats would do better with the mail and votes which take longer to count here in pennsylvania they only started counting those ballots today president trump has been railing against the counting of ballots after the election and republicans here have been filing.