his direction and those who take to the republican policy will simply follow what he says follow his politically and that is somewhat from move from reality and i think is this is the fundamental problem we have here that both sides talking about what is going on. many issues simply don't share the same reality of what facts. make now with the view from washington thank you. special coverage of the u.s. 2020 alexion polls are closed the race is very tight my colleague michael is standing by with the latest results. thank you sarah let's take a look at how it's going in some of the night's key battleground states here's a look at the map of the united states it's looking a lot like maps on election nights have look for the last 20 or so years red in the

middle blue on the edges donald trump the republicans are taking a bite out of the heartland from north dakota all the way down to texas and of course the joe biden winning on the west coast as well as on the east coast california we see there in the biden column new york of course in the biden column what the democrats are trying to do is trying to redraw this map very much what it might have looked like in 2008 when barack obama was able to win his 1st presidential cycle that means winning states like north carolina let's look at the next graphic north carolina is absolutely essential to joe biden specifically because it looks like he's lost florida and may very well lose in the state of pennsylvania donald trump 50 percent. joe biden at about 48 percent with 94 percent of the votes coming in at this point now it's very interesting bill stepien campaign manager has been crunching the numbers and all

along he has said that the president has about 3 pathways to $270.00 electoral votes north carolina is the only state that is on each one of those pathways so an absolutely critical state for the republicans which is why the the blue wall the so-called midwest blue wall is going to be absolutely critical tonight for joe biden let's take a look at the next graphic and of course i'm talking about michigan wisconsin and pennsylvania sure the numbers in michigan at this hour joe biden has about 45 point one percent of the vote donald trump leading with 53.3 percent were 72 percent of the votes counted joe biden thought he could do well in this state because all the polls were indicating that trump was underperforming with some of the working class voters in that town but that remains to be seen he said look at the next graphic the state of wisconsin of course one of the 3 states that donald trump was able to

win back in 2016 by a razor thin margin donald trump won those 3 states again for the 1st time in about 3 decades joe biden in wisconsin with 92 percent of the votes coming in is behind donald trump by 47.2 percent to 51.3 percent the next graphic we'll show you is pennsylvania which is going to be absolutely critical to who wins the election tonight. donald trump you see here with a sizable lead with 64 percent percent of the votes coming in he's got a little over 56 percent to joe biden close to 48 percent why is pennsylvania critical well it's critical because it has 20 electoral votes as you see on the screen there but also it's personal to joe biden he grew up in in scranton pennsylvania he's very proud of saying he comes from that middle working class background and talks about a law and spent 4 decades in the adjacent. state of delaware

as a senator and despite that people say that joe biden was the 3rd senator from pennsylvania so this is a personal as well as political sarah thank you so much michael for walking us through those results u.s. president donald trump also speaking just a short while ago let's have a 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. so we'll be going to the u.s. supreme court we want all voting just. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and add them to the list ok. 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 reelection on tuesday he criticized the president in a sharp worded tweet thanks 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 and the fate of the race we're joined here in the studio by professor philip i robot international diplomacy expert and us political expert welcome to the program richard walker is with us richard is our chief international editor and richard i'd like to turn to you and 1st ask for your reaction to what we just heard the u.s. president saying also your reaction to the results that michael has been presenting if you look at both of those messages it appears it appears as if the republicans might be busting through without blue wall those key states of pennsylvania

wisconsin and michigan can we assume that or is that still too early. too early to say i mean those crucial states that we've been talking about tonight really do seem to hold the key to this election and what makes it particularly. particularly kind of tense situation is that. the voting a lot of the voting particularly on the democratic side it is assumed took place in the form of voting in the weeks leading up to the election even either by post or in person and donald trump here is essentially trying to stop the vote count 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 votes on the election day as well so there's a huge amount of counting to get through it could be

a day 2 days 3 days even before we have a result there and i mean i think that you know there are 2 really striking things that we just heard from the statement there from donald trump where he said well what had frankly we did win this election as far as i'm concerned we already have one well it's not for him to decide whether the election has been a one or not and then this point we want all voting to stop voting has stopped counting that's on the way and it's the counting that he appear. is to want to stop or at least is thrown into doubt and this has you know either a serious democratic impact in undermining you know the validity of people's votes that would cost a good face but also it potentially sets up a real crisis of legitimacy for the future president was whoever that is because if joe biden gets elected you know if he joe biden comes through what may be a pro long legal battle there will be many trump supporters who believe trump said

that on election day this was a for a bill to say a massive fraud against the american people has very dangerous ok though i'd like to get your reaction to what we have just heard the u.s. 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 i find it really distressing those words i mean there's nothing the only judgment 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 a lot of folks who are doing the mail in voting are democratic voters also the president had encouraged his voters to turnout on election day whereas the democrats more concerned and conscious of the copen pandemic have said that their mail in voting is

a way to go so these are. you know the president has set the stage for this and there's no legitimacy felt to that kind of assertion that that voting house or the counting house has to turn richard what sort of timeline could we be looking at because i mean we have these 3 states where we can see already the battle forming the pennsylvania michigan wisconsin how long could it take before we have a result in that state that and and what is happening right now. on the ground you think in terms of the lawyers in terms of you know setting up for battle on both sides of the speed of preparation for some time and don't i was being very transparent about it even in recent days but also in recent weeks just sort of saying that he's lining up for for a legal battle and there are 2 steps and this is count taking place and then there's the legal track. and 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 this

a challenge for instance in pennsylvania on detail whether votes that arrive after election day but a postmarked before election day whether those can be counted the republicans challenging that and hoping that the supreme court will hear that and they 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 with this kind of legal wrangling around it was florida of course in the year 2000 between george w. bush and al gore and that to correct me if i'm wrong but that too pretty much to the end of the year for the supreme court to come through with a decision that was just florida you were talking potentially about multiple states . so yeah we could be in for quite a long period of uncertainty to what do you think the lessons are from back in 2000 and talk with us about how different the country is now and the court especially now in the year 2020 and how we could potentially see things shaking out in the

coming days perhaps in the coming weeks i think the environment is quite different i mean obviously the divisiveness in the country is much stronger and back then you had 2 candidates that both you know committed to a very basic foundation of ocracy 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 you might not be comfortable with any result we're hughes the winner is a very different kind of context that than we had in 2000 even though it was of course. an election that was drawn out to the end of the year and ended up in the supreme court but it's a different context here in terms of what it means for democracy i think one thing this can be very interesting we've already seen one response from a relatively little known republican congressman but how. not just how is the

court's going to respond to this the courts of course have been increasing need to politicize that's a long running process the supreme court itself has become increasingly propel it is sized and and has gained a significant conservative majority under donald trump now but also how other republicans respond to this relatively unknown congressman his will be scouring for more reactions how much support does trump have for going down this road. what we've seen so far you know the trump presidency is the most. of 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've been this high reluctantly but they his they say you know here it's not you know we don't know whether he's a winner and that is this a point at which more of them kind of bail on him what is mitt romney going to say about this you know some of these kind of like sort of highly regarded sort of kind

of what you might call sort of true conservatives you know against the populist movement the trump of forces that can be really interesting because of his report support fulls away that's going to weaken his position and we're going to get more on the state of the party the state of the race but 1st i just like to highlight for our viewers the fact that the world is watching this election it is more than just about america donald trump and for example german chancellor angela merkel they have had a truly rocky relationship in these past 4 years where has it left ties between the u.s. and germany that transatlantic relationship here's our report. even before donald trump became us president it was clear the relationship wouldn't be easy. now merkel what did she do she's destroyed i mean she's in the process of destroying germany with a migration time magazine he didn't even give me the man of the year the person of

the year they should have. that's why it's heading down the tubes folks. they gave it to a woman who's not done the right thing in germany it's not going to well over there . that woman on the cover was in fact german chancellor angela merkel. and will once trump did become president she congratulated him on his election but in typical american style she threw in a subtle dig. so i chant america germany and america connected by values democracy freedom respect for the law and for the dignity of human beings regardless of their origin skin color religion gender sexual orientation or political views. order. and. this photo of medical facing trump at a g 7 meeting went viral seen by many as

a perfect illustration of their report so was their 1st encounter when trump ignored america's suggestion to shake hands thank you. thank you. one of the biggest sources of disagreement has been nato trump has attacked germany without pause saying it was not paying its fair share towards the alliance. germany as you know is very delinquent in their. payments to nato. and they're paying one percent in this supposed to be a 2 percent of the 2 percent is very low it should be much more than that so they're delinquent of billions of dollars and this is for years the liquid. when trump tweeted racist attacks on this group of democratic us congress women openly condemned his actions. just one of the few the midst of an achievement. i

firmly distanced myself from the attacks and i stand in solidarity with these women . america's strength from my perspective lies precisely in the fact that people of very different nationalities have contributed to the strength of the country. therefore these a statement the ground very much. to this impression of mine for. a strained relationship but also opposite approaches like on how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and how to wear a face mask. now with trump fighting for a 2nd term in office and miracle in her last year as chancellor it may soon be time to kiss goodbye the question is how soon. well it's certainly been a difficult year for the transatlantic relationship let's talk about where it may

be headed now he is brussels bureau chief at alexander phenomena standing by at the parliamentary studios i am also joined by thomas sparrow welcome to both of you alexandra we have heard or rather have we heard any statements yet from brussels reacting to what we are seeing in the u.s. right now. i haven't seen any remarkable statements yet nothing on the high level of e.u. officials or e.u. leaders and this is really not surprising because europe still doesn't know who it is going to deal with in the next 4 years and we can only imagine that they are holding their breaths there or maybe even shocked by what president strum said today that he claimed victory and said that he's going to go to the supreme court to stop all the voting even. though there are so many votes being counted right now across the united states so we can assume that this statement has set alarm bells

ringing here in the europe and many here. anyway that the democracy in the u.s. is in peril so far no official reaction yet the only thing we know is that the ambassadors are going to talk about what's happening in the u.s. today to avoid a call for need to speak with one voice if europe decides to talk thomas what's the view from berlin meanwhile i agree with alexandra they're being very careful here politicians in berlin what we've heard so far goes along 2 main lines on the one hand stressing the importance of the election reigns peaceful and on the other hand making sure that it's in germany's interest but also in the u.s. is interest to have clarity as soon as possible and obviously now that we've just heard what president donald trump had to say that aspect that clarity is something that i do imagine german politicians are particularly concerned about alexander you

covered the white house for years for d w just what goes through this state of the transatlantic relationship right now. well the relations there in the very bad stay state i would say a lot of damage has been done it's not only what president strummed really did that he pulled out of the paris climate agreement that he pulled out of the iran nuclear deal that he declared that is with throwing from there we're going ization it's also what he said to the european union and i was in the oval office on the regular basis in the last 3 and a half years and i heard him criticize the you were p. and union and germany in particular very many times or different occasions using very harsh words calling the european union foe and that was regarded by many here

in brussels as a red line so we have to say that many here feel for this reason that another 4 years of donald trump could lead to the fact that this deficit of trust that we are seeing right now could become an era concise breach between the european union and the united states and alexander really highlighting mer how trump has exacerbated some of the stress points between the countries but thomas you know i'll ask you from berlin if there is potentially a biden presidency coming forward is that really likely to change much because so many of the fundamental issues are actually bipartisan in the us aren't they. something that could change is the tone and the way in which diplomacy is conducted and that is certainly the hope here in berlin i also imagine it's the hope in other european capitals if that is the case that the told would at least be different but

some of the major issues are not exclusive to trump and they're not exclusive also to republicans i remember when i was in washington myself a few years ago during the obama presidency there was already criticism then about germany's nato defense spending that's something that goes on to say beyond the donald trump presidency and that would also go that would also be very controversial indeed if mr biden wins the presidency so this is always important to understand when we look at the transatlantic relationship yes there are elements that are particular to mr trump on and chancellor merkel but at the same time there are issues that go well beyond that thomas ferro alexander phenomena thank you so much to both of you. let's head back to the studio now where it we are rejoined by phil i you professor and richard walker from our team here at to talk about the state of the u.s. presidential race and you know phil i'd like to toss it to you and ask you

a little bit about what we just heard there about the state of the transatlantic relationship. you know more broadly speaking as well the world is really watching america right now walk us through the scenarios in terms of foreign policy of what we could see and has foreign policy really even been an issue for the candidates as they have been campaigning over the past month and weeks let me start with your final question you know i think it's been less of an issue given the state of unrest in the u.s. even though the all of the issues that are affecting the u.s. right now have global dimensions so if you think the covert pandemic of course that's connected also to how the next president will approach that through global cooperation as was said before whether you know biden presidency would return to the world health organization or we have 4 more years of trump in terms of the transatlantic relationship i think you know the tone is really important this relationship as you know in how it has proceeded in the last 4 years that has really shook the rock of the post world war 2 order and i think europeans are

watching cautiously to see is this a 4 year aberration are we back to normal is there a partial reset that can be done with the biden presidency who might approach this with humility with multilateral. multilateralism at the center of a u.s. leadership role and i think you know if if we go if we end up with 4 more years of time there will be serious reckoning questions about whether you know there has to be movement in a different direction in some ways for the for the europeans on the other side of the tracks and it's not just about europe you know another big area that people are watching is of course china they're also watching a ron we said in china for example taking a really hard line opposing to. biden criticizing him saying that they're actually biting the american people what sort of policy changes could we potentially see biden does come out on top and what more could we see from donald trump if he does indeed get the mandate of 4 more years yeah i mean that has been the kind of one

area of foreign policy that has been quite at the forefront of trump's entire positioning this year has been china and there are there are multiple levels to that i mean it's anti china in terms of trade. which has been an ongoing thing but it's also the pandemic you know china he set up china as the whipping boy for for the pandemic saying that it's the virus and saying even sort of coming very close to suggesting that this was some kind of deliberate attack by china on the united states so china is the forefront and you know trump has been trying to portray biden as soft on china. and it certainly is the case. is probably going to have to take a tougher line on china than say the obama administration did. but that's partly because of the new reality around china china in the last few years has really reached you know pretty well i level with the united states as

a rival superpower these powers are always going to be rubbing off against each other and how that relationship falls out is going to be one of the crew really the great political question of the century. so you can anticipate maybe a different tone from china maybe a slightly more kind of constructive attitude but certainly america's kind of overall position it was china's deeply on both sides of the political divide but also i think just to kind of relate back to europe just briefly i mean. important but i think that the the european and also german kind of concern about about trump is more than turn it is also substance will. king us of these treaties and even deeper than that is values they look at trump and they think he simply does not share kind of mainstream west and western european political diplomatic values

things like multi-lateralism as an approach to solving world problems that's deeply ingrained in europe especially in germany i mean it's a collection of middle sized powers a working together how could it not. protecting the environment. is he serious other issues donald trump they look at him and they think this represents a kind of america that really no longer has shares the valley the deep seas of values that we thought it day with the man with europe and that concern about you know that particular approach is one that has really been expressed openly it has sometimes been expressed very overtly here in europe we have to say talk with us about you know what has happened in europe now in the past 4 years and has actually been an opportunity for europe to unify to perhaps make some progress on its own

common security and defense policy. has been an opportunity and i think there are some things that also carry over from before trouble with the obama administration when it comes to defense spending for example and europeans and their security i don't know if we've seen as much movement as we could have there were discussions of course in paris and berlin about kind of really vamping this idea of the european army but there hasn't been as much movement on that i think that people were you know that governments were holding their breath also to see what happens after these 4 years ok richard you're going to stick with us but 1st we're going to have a check on the state of the race you're watching special coverage of the u.s. elections the race between the incumbent president donald trump and democratic challenger joe biden remains tight despite millions of uncounted votes trump appeared to claim victory prematurely telling supporters quote frankly we've already won he also.