the good news for. the e.c.u. team. cut up. good structure all. this. respect. it's tenses exciting and it's disturbing america has voted in a momentous presidential election that has pitted republican incumbent donald trump against democrat challenger full of vice president joe biden welcome to the point. well the turnout has being huge with long lines in many places across the country president trump's showing has been unexpectedly strong and he has shocked many like

clay being that he is the winner and that he will now go to the supreme court claiming major for award but joe biden has also told his supporters that he's confident of victory. although still being counted in a process that can take hours or even days our question on to the point since u.s. election and the winner is. a. good. one joining me here in the studio osredak david villa up from the german marshall fund who say there is no landslide for any of the candidates but trump ism is here to stay and a warm welcome to to stage 2 britons from the w.c. u.s. election team her opinion of trump. franco destroying american democracy as we know

it's also with us is joseph watch uncertain us journalist and lawyer on. every us state has until december the 18th to finish counting votes on the supremes coal must comply with federal law. thank you very much for being with us today here on d w stacey off t w i'd like to begin with you because you have been up all night so i know collecting impressions of what's been going on remarkable events what's you know what. stood out for you. the most was that the polls are wrong yet again. we can't trust them at the moment something needs to be we reworked because. if you're a democrat for example and you've been told that leading up to this biden has is in the lead and it's going to be a landslide and then all of a sudden you realize that this isn't the case and if you're a black left matter person or a person who's in the l b g

t q community you realize that there is a part of america that does not care about equality and safety for you and that's very scary. that is america failing to go that route and i think that there's a there's many issues involved part of it is education an educational system that focus more on patriotism than on true education and you know clear thoughts and i think that there are certain people that support trump because they love the tax cuts and then there's other people who actually believe the racist rhetoric that if you're black or brown that you are not as that you are inferior and that the reason why you haven't made it in life is because you're not smart enough and you're not strong enough and it has nothing to do with with institutional racism sudha your initial impressions that i think that the landslide never occurred and whoever wins will win by a small margin so that means that the united states will we continue to be sort of polarized and there may be some place that we see. when it comes to certain states

but i guess we have to remember that the results are not yet in and it will take a while for them to be counted and so we have to see how this all pans out and it's not just the white house we also have to see what congress looks like will the senate flip to the democrats and if that happens and president does get reelected then congress can be an effective check on the presidency the results soon but president trump joe is already saying that he is the winner. i mean this is the most undemocratic being any electoral official could ever say before we've even finished counting the votes. he wants to stop the vote and then he was tweeting out inaccurate information if you were in line when the polls closed you are a loud to continue to stay in that line and to cast your vote for him saying you know in one of his tweets you know people are voting after polls close that's fraud

that's not fraud that's actually how the system works and so i need to rein it in a little bit but donald trump has proven through out his presidency that there was no lie too big he was going to shy away from telling and now we're entering a very critical and dangerous moment of our electoral process where on the election night while we know we still have days or weeks to count things he's saying oh stop it it's all fraud. you're saying it's extremely dangerous i mean the system will trump. i mean he's been disruptive throughout his presidency that has been one of his trademarks but is this something does this go still further is he now. moving into a 2nd term to change america completely from what we know this is what he's been building up for you know he's been telling us for the past couple of months that we couldn't trust our electoral systems that there was going to be fraud that the democrats were going to try to steal the election away from him he's been telling his supporters that they should go you know watch the voters which is really it's

nothing more than voter intimidation which is illegal in fact and so the concern now is how much further is he going to go we've always seen he moves you know it just the temperature gets a little bit hotter a little bit hotter we get used to that a little bit hotter a little bit hotter we get used to that and what we're seeing now is he's trying to say that the results are illegitimate he's trying to get his supporters riled up the proud boys i'm sure are still listening to him and standing by as he said in the 1st debate he's really i think at this point knowing there are so many criminal . let's hear what the president himself has to say. we want the load to be used in a proper manner so we'll be going to the u.s. supreme court we want to hold voting just. we don't want them to find any

ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and them for the list ok. it's a very. it's a very sad moment to me this is a very sad moment and we will win this and. we already have. in your capacity as a lawyer which is a useful resource for us to have today at that time tell us what's going to happen next time what the sort of the timetabling of it might be i mean the difficult thing is so there's no you know one system for all the 50 states each of the states votes differently they count their votes differently some states have already counted votes before election day some won't count until after with the absentee ballots but the thing that does bind all states is because of the electoral count at that says that you know we have voted on november 3rd there are 41 days until the electoral college has to meet that's december 14th and there's what's called the safe harbor provision 6 days before that december 8th which is the date at

which all the states have to certify their results so no matter what trump is saying no matter how much he's threatening to go to the supreme court now the supreme court will be balland by this congressional law it's over 100 years old and we have to respect that. you're not doing it well i mean i think it's it is outrageous what donald trump says about having been victorious already but at the same time i mean i actually think he can say that in a sense because even though he may lose at the end his ideology for the republican party is not going to go away any time soon and the question is because if the dollar loses badly if he wins that's one thing but if he loses only by you know by a hair line his idea of the republican party will be here to say as well his family i mean he's got. who are surely looking into future political careers themselves

ok let's just before we move on let's listen to what to challenger joe biden has to say it's not my place your dollar where. that's a decision of the american pretty cool but i'm optimistic about this. station how important is it for the american people to make that decision themselves rather than having the whole months ago to tell us of lawyers and how important is it that they get a clear decision. i think a clear decision now. is not going to happen and we need to take the time we're in the middle of a pandemic there's a reason why so many people were mailing in but their votes their votes there is a reason why there is a backlog millions of votes have come in and you have people they don't have as much manpower and certain counties and so they're counting as fast as they can but it's better to have it right than to have it fast and this is what i mean when i'm

talking about trying to destroy democracy this is each person's voice each person saying what they want and the very idea that the president of the united states wants to take a where their vote is unconscionable i was so moved when i heard about this harris county texas lawsuit this is the president didn't file this lawsuit but the republican party supports it another republican activists was trying to get 127000 votes rescinded because of the way the votes were cast it was illegal according to their to the laws of that county but still they were trying to take away people's votes people who voted early and in good faith it's unbelievable brava has been a huge surge in sports of normal child abuse incontrovertibly of us up and this is what we are seeing many many americans tuning to donald trump as the mom that they see the future invested in this at the same time as the prime demick how does it

out oh i actually think that if it weren't for the pandemic doll trumpet of coasted to toward reelection i think many experts were saying that at the beginning of this year because the economy was doing so well that donald trump had a very good chance of winning reelection now the coronavirus pandemic changed all of that and our country has been you know undergone 3 crises at the same time an economic want a health crisis and also one of race relations in the united states but i suppose his messaging about law and order has you know had some effect on voters to be. for election before the election and also his attempt to paint the democrats as radical left socialists that must have also had an effect to an extent however due biden has failed to capitalize on all of what you are saying why is that a problem with joe biden or a problem with the democratic party or what i do think that joe biden has been is the man for the moment for the democratic party in the sense that he's

a moderate candidate he can unify the party and you know elections usually general elections are won from the middle not from the extremes so i guess he is the right man for the moment but instead of it making it just a referendum on president trump perhaps the democrats could have given a little bit more airtime to what they what they want to do i mean that's that kind of got lost in all the noise let's listen to what we've got to voices from ordinary americans if you so listen to what you can pick up quick. 54 go very. very very many people. over there mark you're right i'm very right for america is very right. i love our democracy and love america and i don't know if you could do it already and i just want to make progress and argue. very important.

so yellow taxicabs i'm going to see him that was my hometown new york city without even going to assume who those people you know supported i think the problem that many americans have not been able to grasp at this point is that donald trump is the danger to the american presidency to the nation to democracy to the international world order to peace to stability we've had over 200000 lives lost the pandemic and i think you know if you have to look at it kind of like a cult you know people have been so brainwashed i think is the phrase we're using that at this point they're committed because at this point for them to turn against something they are doing and they can sadly of american voters vote for. the proportionality is there i mean i have half of registered voters and this is an important other important distinction so it's not half of the nation we have unfortunately i think still many undecided voters perhaps you know tens of millions

that are undecided voters and a number of disenfranchised voters as well so. yes half of registered voters perhaps not many vote just say i think to be fair joe a lot of these problems were also there before the era of donald trump you know they were just sort of swept under the rug by both republicans and democrats and that's kind of the reason we have dollar trump as well he can he you know he campaigned in 2016 as an anti-establishment candidate and it's true you would think that considering where we are right now that. it would be toast for have on election day but obviously there are enough people who think that dollar trump is the right person to change things that are not correct about our hate and motivated by racism a lot of people a lot of people yes but not entirely i'm not saying that every everyone is like i said some people are just worried about their bottom line or x. but there are so many people and i know this is my experience growing up in

a predominately white suburb where people automatically assume that if i was if you're black that you you didn't really belong you must have been on some kind of a welfare program or you know if you were in a good academic program oh well you know you were just let and just because of affirmative action it was never because you were deserving or because of your merit it was because you were black and. and they feel like and we're talking about the people that white voters they feel aggrieved and they feel like they're not further along because of some black or brown person that's taken their place they don't seem to realize that they're also part of the problem because they're voting against their interest i lost how white poor americans can identify more with donald trump than with joe biden that blows my mind you see job very very see donald trump is hovering the better credentials on.