Republicans Bash Donald Trump For Election Fraud Claims, While He Wants To Cease Vote Counts

President Donald Trump angered many within the Republican Party when he accused state officials of stealing the election from him. Moments after former Vice President Joe Biden delivered remarks in the wee hours of November 4, Trump took the stage at the White House. "We are up big, but they are trying to steal the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the polls are closed," he tweeted. “We want all voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. It’s a very sad moment. We will win this, and as far as I’m concerned we already have won," he told supporters at his election night party.

Much of Trump's frustration has been geared toward the state of Pennsylvania where tens of thousands of ballots have yet to be counted. Out west, officials in Arizona are still counting ballots as well. However, there are no reports of election fraud taking place.

Rather, officials are counting an unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots. In states like Pennsylvania, officials elected to wait until November 3 to begin counting mail-in ballots. As a result, election results may not be available in Pennsylvania until Thursday or even Friday.

Trump's declaration that poll workers were attempting to "steal" the election from him rather than following protocols and doing their job greatly upset many Republicans.

“There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight,” former Republic Governor Chris Christie said.

“There just isn’t. All these votes have to be counted that are in now. I disagree with what he did tonight. There comes a point where you have to let the process play itself out before you judge it to have been flawed.” Even some of members of Fox News criticized the President's comments. “This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match on it,” Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace said.

“He hasn’t won these states. Nobody is saying he’s won the states. The states haven’t said that he’s won.”

Despite push back from within his party, Trump is sticking to his guns. He hopped on Twitter this morning to let his supporters know that he is not backing off of his claims anytime soon. "Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!," he tweeted. With millions of ballots left to be counted, it doesn't appear that this election will be decided for some time.

Also, in a late-night speech from the White House, President Trump declared the plan he has been openly signaling for weeks: He hopes to steal the 2020 election by prematurely declaring himself the winner and halting the tabulation of outstanding ballots that, if counted, would give Joe Biden a strong chance of victory.

Trump’s argument is simple and farcical. In states where Trump trails, like Arizona, he urges that more votes should be counted and that he will probably win. (Fox News has called Arizona for Biden, a projection that was followed up around 3 a.m. by the Associated Press.) In states where Trump leads, he's called for no more votes to be counted. Trump on Georgia, where his opponent is slightly favored to pull ahead by projections: “They’re never gonna catch us, they can’t catch us.” Simply put, halt the vote count where he's leading in and continue the vote where he's behind in, with hopes of catching up. Sorry Mr. president, it doesn't work that way.