Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump fired off a broadside at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday, saying that US media and a conspiracy to commit voter fraud are rigging the election against him.
Amid the latest Twitter blasts from Trump, his running mate, Mike Pence, said his camp would accept defeat if that is what voters decide on Nov. 8.
Two polls on Sunday put Clinton ahead.
However, they did so by vastly different numbers:
An ABC News/Washington Post survey had Clinton four points ahead, while an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll put her margin at 11 points.
A Republican Party office in the southern state of North Carolina was firebombed overnight on Sunday, with the message “Nazi Republicans, leave town or else” sprayed on an adjacent building. No one was hurt in the attack.
As Trump and Clinton prepare for their third and last debate tomorrow, Clinton is lying low, with the apparent strategy of letting Trump self-destruct.
These are delicate times for Clinton. It is difficult for Clinton to speak out against Trump’s alleged sexual misconduct because she stayed beside her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, even as he was mired in sex scandals, including accusations of rape, humiliating her on his way to being impeached.
Trump, in a long stream of tweets on Sunday, said repeatedly that US media are rigging the election by hammering away at what he calls fabricated accounts of him making unwanted sexual advances on women.
Trump has denied the allegations, which began last week and have been a steady stream.
“Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!” Trump wrote.
In another tweet, he said that voter fraud would be a problem on election day.
“The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary — but also at many polling places — SAD,” he said.
Former New York Mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani told CNN that Democratic districts are known for counting the votes of dead people.
“You want me to [say] that I think the election in Philadelphia and Chicago is going to be fair? I would have to be a moron to say that,” he said.
“I’ve found very few situations where Republicans cheat. They don’t control the inner cities the way Democrats do. Maybe if Republicans controlled the inner cities, they’d do as much cheating as Democrats do,” Giuliani said.
Trump has been insisting for months that the election is rigged.
“He is swinging at every phantom of his own imagination, because he knows he’s losing,” Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, told ABC.
After the first debate Trump said he would respect the election result, but in an interview with the New York Times last month he said: “We’re going to see what happens.”
Pence tried to put the issue to rest on Sunday, telling CBS News: “We will absolutely accept the results of the election.”
The nation’s top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who has declared that he would no longer “defend” the party’s nominee, rebuked Trump over his comments questioning the validity of the election process.
“Our democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement.
Trump said: “The Democrats have a corrupt political machine pushing crooked Hillary Clinton. We have Paul Ryan, always fighting the Republican nominee!”
“Paul Ryan, a man who doesn’t know how to win must start focusing on the budget, military, vets etc,” Trump tweeted.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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