host: you're watching france 24 live from paris. here are the stories making headlines. two days after the election, and still no verdict in the u.s. presidential race. as the count goes on, donald trump launches lawsuits and the biden campaign says it is expecting a victory. here in france, cases of covid-19 hit a new dai record with the country already under a national lockdown. the government looks to tighten restrictions even further. the president of kosovo resigns from office and is in detention in the hague. he is facing possible war crimes

including charges of murder. thanks for joining us. we begin in the u.s., where the counting of votes is still underway, and we still do not know who will be the next president of the united states. joe biden has the clearest path to victory in the electoral college. donald trump still has a path, but it is more of an uphill battle. votes are still being tabulated in five key states, arizona, nevada, pennsylvania, georgia, and north carolina. here are the current totals. biden has 250 three votes. the associated press has called arizona for biden, which would bring his total to 264, just six

votes from the 270 needed to win. donald trump's current count is 213 or 214 with one vote from maine called by the ap but not other outlets. those of us betting on results on election night were certainly wrong. it is looking like this is going to drag on a bit longer. >> it is thursday. it is still election night. it may be -- we may be closer than we think to the end of phase one because we could get results -- and i put this in the conditiona-- we could get results from pennsylvania before the night is through here in the united states. pennsylvania, where donald trump is still in the lead, but the lead is shrinking. 101 thousand votes the difference in a state that

carries 20 votes for the electoral college. if trump loses pennsylvania, joe biden is the next u.s. president. of course, that brings on phase two, the lawsuits you mentioned, which have already begun. we could get more results later from other key states. arizona is expected to announce a big batch of result in five hours. we are also expecting more results from nevada. in georgia, it just gets closer and closer, to the point where it is not just the winner of the presidential contest that hangs in the balance, but whether or not there will be a runoff for a senate seat. if both of georgia's senate seats -- there are two up for grabs -- go to a runoff, it effectively means that the senate is back in play and that

democrats still have a chance of controlling the upper chamber of, or -- of congress. host: that would be a crazy scenario because we might not find out until january when runoff take place. you have had conversations with voters in the past few days. this race was much closer than polls indicated. what does that say about how polarized to the country is right now? >> there is, on the one hand, the fact that the citizens were told for a long time to be prepared, you have had 10 times the amount of postal ballots you would in a normal election. the turnout is unprecedented. it's going to take time to count ballots. said to the state clerk in atlanta, fast is great, accuracy is better.

most people take that message to heart even though there have been minor issues here or there. and then of course the president of the united states himself, we had donald trump crying foul at 2:00 a.m. on election night, saying that the vote count should be stopped. the u.s. president has not made any public pronouncements since, and there is a deafening silence you can hear in washington, and that is coming from sior republicans like the senate majority leader. they have not been speaking out. why? one of the hypotheses put forward is that they are faring better than the polls had predicted. they want to see all the results before they line up behind donald trump. host: so, donald trump is filing all these lawsuits and saying to stop this account. do you think there is a strategy, or is he just venting

on twitter? >> it is a strategy both sides have been preparing for for months. both sides claimed to be properly lawyered up. the democrats are still haunted by the year 2000 when they were outflanked in 35 days when the whole world was watching the state of florida. it was a tight election. florida, in the end, the supreme court banned the state from recounting the ballots. they don't want to get outflanked in the courts if we do graduate to the next phase, especially because this year it could be florida on steroids. it's not just pennsylvania, but perhaps places like michigan, wisconsin, and others, where there will be legal challenges. >> thank you so much. some developing news right now, the trump campaign is holding a

news conference in arizona. we want to join that life and hear what they have to say. >> it is an honor to work with you and for you, and we are still hard at work. i can see you are not asleep at the wheel, and neither are we. i can tell you, arizona is in play. we are in play. when i was watching the collection -- election night returns and i saw fox news inappropriately call arizona for a radical leftist, socialist team, i can tell you i started tweeting out right away to retract, retract, because arizona is more than able to win. ok, ok.

it is not about fox. it is about counting our votes. count our votes. count our votes. count our votes. that is exactly what we are doing. whenhe race was inappropriately called by the fake news media, there were hundreds and thousands of votes -- hundreds of thousands of votes still out. even today, there are hundreds of thousands of votes and it is trending in the direction of president donald j. trump. we have the team on the ground. we have the people. we have the momentum. we have the activist community that is not going to allow this

race to be stolen from president trump or from republicans all the way down the ballot. you can count on me and i am going to count on you. i am going to leave it at that, but you don't need to hear from me, i think you know. we are going to win this state for donald trump. i have some awesome people here with me and you will hear from them in just a moment, but i do want to introduce our congressmen. we have the coo of the trump campaign. we have boris epstein right here. >> a news conference by the trump campaign in arizona. that was the gop party of arizona. she was making some comments there. she seemed very upset about the fact that some of the media outlets have already called arizona for biden.

interesting that they were chanting count our votes, but then trump is tweeting stop counting the votes. >> that's going to look like a contradiction. in some states, the legal challenge is to stop counting, that's in red states where donald trump is ahead in the vote. and he wants to keep counting in places like arizona where we have seen donald trump in the last couple of hours almost catch up with joe biden. he remains in the lead. a lot of the anger hear from the gop in arizona is because, as you heard in that press conference, several news outlets, fox news had a particular reporter -- they certainly were not the only one, the associated press as well called arizona relatively early on for biden. that's when there were around 80% of the votes counted.

biden was ahead enough, the associated press and fox felt, to give the state to the democratic party. but in the days since then, we have seen that lead shrink. we have seen donald trump make progress in the state. but at the moment, about 88% of the votes have been counted. donald trump is around 68,000 votes behind joe biden read he is still behind, despite what you heard in that press conference. for the moment, saying the election has been snatched from donald trump does not hold up. but when the count is complete, when we get the remaining 12% of the vote, if fox news and the associated press called it too early, they will of course say that trump won the state. at the moment, there is no

evidence of irregularity or fraud. that is with the state official was trying to argue. >> both ap and fox news are standing by their call. >> they are standing by their call. it's interesting to note they have had to be a little defensive about that call. we have seen other outlets, cnn and the new york times saying that for the moment they think it is too close to call arizona. in general, the associated press is kind of the gold standard when it comes to calling states in u.s. elections. they have four years now. the new york times and cnn have their own counters. clearly, it is close. that is why we are seeing this discrepancy. but there is no evidence of fraud despite it being very clear the gop -- despite it being very clear that's what the gop officials want to insinuate.

>> joining us as a fellow at the brennan center for justice. thank you for joining us. trump has said he wants the vote counting to stop, but if that happened now, he would lose. what is his legal strategy? >> he doesn't have a legal strategy. the lawsuits are part of the bluster. obviously, from the tweets that came out in the middle of the night on election night, president trump is talking about fraud. he has put out a call for his supporters to go and intimidate vote counters. and to generally push back on the idea that legally cast votes are and should be counted. the lawsuits are simply part of the same smokescreen to try to cast doubt on the appropriate counting of votes. it takes a while to count those votes.

especially when people are voting by mail. it's typical in every single election. i think they are trying to take a page out of the playbook of president bush, whi was, by inmidating the vote count in florida, they were able to get it stopped for a wild. there was something called a brooks brothers riot where republican operatives charged a palm beach office where they were counting votes. they had a riot. and i think they are hoping the same effort will stop voting officials and to the process long enough that president trump might have some other strategy. the lawsuits have no merit in the slightest and that is why the trump campaign has lost every single one of them so far. >> does the fact that they are filing all these lawsuits

indicate that they are afraid of losing? >> oh yes. that's clear. they are definitely losing. i mean, you read the numbers. it's so interesting, the republican chair of the party in arizona calls fox news fake news. fox news has been trump network until now. and it's a very interesting strategy, as you said, to push to count the vote where he is behind and stop the vote where he is ahead. you can't really have it both ways. it's not a consistent argument. it's certainly not a legal argument. >> so, if trump refuses to accept the results in case of a biden win, would he have any legal recourse at all, in your opinion? >> absolutely not. it's not his place to determine

that. congress accepts the vote count presented by the electors. the electoral college would meet and were biden forecast to win right now, as soon as he gets to 270, that's the law. if donald trump refuses to exit the white house, he will have to be escorted out by law enforcement and face the consequences. >> so, in nevada, the trump campaign is filing a lawsuit seeking to stop the count of what they are calling improper votes, people who have moved out of the state because of the pandemic. do you think they are just grasping at straws? >> absolutely. it's the same in all the other states. they are dumping these filings without any effort to create a defensible legal argument.

that's why they are being thrown out at a record pace. judges are finding them completely without merit. and joe biden is ahead in nevada. so if they stop the counting, i think joe biden wins nevada. it's a peculiar argument in many ways. in that case, it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to get the counting stopped. the only thing that will allow donald trump to win in nevada is to keep the counting going. >> it sounds like they are just throwing everything at the wall and want to see what sticks. >> that's exactly right. it's a desperation move. but this is all the style of donald trump. he is a bluster. he is a demagogue. and he has been lying repeatedly throughout his presidency. i think the washington post has documented tens of thousands of lies.

but the most absolutely destructive to democracy have been his lies about the the right people have to cast a ballot by mail, especially in a pandemic. people voted anyway. i have deep admiration for the american people for protecting and fighting for their right to vote at a time of a pandemic and economic distress. donald trump is now trying, through lies and intimidation, to take that away from him. -- them. >> thank you so much for joining us. nadia, we know joe biden is expected to speak shortly. his response to donald trump's filing of these lawsuits has en to callor unity. >> joe biden has been clear every day since ballots closed, and that is that every vote in

the united states needs to be clear -- needs to be counted and will be counted, and whoever is the eventual winner of this election -- bearing in mind, it looks most likely at the moment that joe biden will be that winner -- that the country needs to come together now. he has said several times that one post in the united states where there is no disunity is the post of the presidency. we heard from our correspondent earlier today in philadelphia. she was walking between two protests, a pro-trump and a o-biden. joe biden will speak to unity. he says he is somebody who will be able to work with republicans in congress. but it is clear the divisions on the american street are extreme and i don't think they are going away fast. >> trump has been saying to stop

the count of the votes, but that's not how elections work. you have to finish counting the votes to get a result. i'm not sure have a question here, but it is routinely -- certainly a message he is sticking with. >> and there are two different issues. there are legal challenges and recounts. on the question of recounts, donald trump is within his right to ask for a recount if the number of votes is within a certain percent, around 1%. we know in wisconsin, the trump campaign called for a recount. they will get that recount. but it is absolutely within their right. but it is unlikely to change the result drastically. about 20,000 votes separate joe biden and donald trump. in florida in 2000, in that year were everything really went down to the wire with the hanging chads, around 200 or 300 votes changed hands in those recounts.

a recount will be allowed. the legal challenges are a whole other area. we just heard very compellingly from your guests that the issue, the goal of the trump campaign with the recounts is not e.necessarily the legal challens themselves. it has been pretty clear that a lot of these challenges are weak . the goal is a public relations campaign among the american populace to try to cast doubt on the veracity of these votes, on the election itself. i think we are about to hear from joe biden. >> let's listen in. >> mr. biden: we are reminded again about the severity of this pandemic. cases are on the rise. there have been nearly 240,000 deaths to covid. our hearts go out to each and every family that has lost a loved one to this terrible disease. the american vote is sacred.

it is how people in this nation express there will -- their will, and it is the will of the voters, not anything else, that chooses the president of the united states of america. so each ballot must be counted, and that is what we're going to see now. that's how it should be. democracy is sometimes risky. it sometimes requires a little patience as well. but that patience has been rewarded now for more than 200 years with a system of governance that has been the envy of the world. the senator and i continue to feel very good about where things stand. we have no doubt that wh the count is finished, senator harris and i will be declared the winners. so, i ask everyone to stay calm. all people, stay calm. the process is working. the count is being completed. we will know very soon.

thank you all for your patience. but we have to count the votes. god bless you all. may god protect our troops. thank you so much. quite so, that was a short and sweet speech from joe biden saying he is confident he will win. he talked about the will of the voters, that they have the right to choose the president. every ballot should be counted, he said. he said democracy is messy and we need to wait and see. >> you never want to see how the sausage is made. democracy is messy. but we are all glued to the television screen, watching what is going on. the american people in the world are impatient. they want to know results in the key swing states that are going to decide who is going to be in the white house for the next term in office. but the main point there was

reiterating what he said on twitter and the other day as well. every ballot must be counted. he will wait for the final results. but he said we feel very good about where things are. we have no doubt that when the ballots are counted, they will be victorious. what he says there is based on knowing that he has far more paths to the white house than donald trump. he loses big states like pennsylvania, north carolina, georgia, it's out for him. joe biden could lose some of those states and still win the presidency. that was a short and sweet speech to try to counter some of the president's tweets. >> and he is stopping short of

declaring victory, which trump had already declared. >> he declared it on election night. pretty unprecedented in the united states. normally, at these times, the candidate goes to their base. donald trump was speaking at the white house, trying to use the authority of the white house to say i am the president and will continue to be so. joe biden and donald trump could not look more stark and the messages they are giving to the people in the hours and days after the election. >> stay with us. we will have more world news coming up on france 24.

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11/05/20 11/05/20 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> this afternoon, the filed a lawsuit to stop accounting of the balance in pennsylvania. that is simply wrong. it goes against the most basic principles of our democracy. ap calls michigan and wisconsin for joe biden, moving him closer to the presidency,