
Man who voted holds up his voting lapel pin (Shutterstock)
Donald Trump's ongoing "big lie" of election fraud could harm the trust of his supporters in election and potentially depress the GOP's general election support in a battleground Senate race.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, is narrowly leading David McCormick by about 2,500 votes.
On Wednesday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, "it appeared very likely the race would go to an automatic recount, which happens if the winning margin is less than 0.5% of the total votes cast. To avoid that, the winner would have to end up with a margin of about 6,000 to 6,800 votes. If there is a recount, it could take weeks to get a final resolution, effectively freezing the race on the Republican side."
Meanwhile, Democrats nominated Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Reporter was interviewed about the race on Friday night by MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle.
"First of all, you can't make this up, because right now, Dr. Oz is clinging to a razor-thin lead and what is McCormick's path to erase that? It's mail-in ballots against Trump's endorsed candidate," he explained.
"The best case for Fetterman here is that the dispute over this Republican race drags on for weeks, and it's not resolved, and there's courtroom battles," he explained.
Watch:
Dave Wasserman www.youtube.com
A U.S. citizen and four Chinese intelligence officers have been charged with spying on Chinese dissidents, human rights leaders and pro-democracy activists residing in the United States, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
The indictment accuses Wang Shujun, of Queens, New York, of using his status within Chinese diaspora and dissident communities to collect information about activists on behalf of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS).
Wang, 73, was arrested on March 16 and will be arraigned at a later date, the Justice Department said. The four MSS officials, who the department named as Feng He, Jie Ji, Ming Li and Keqing Lu, are still at large, it added. The indictment was unsealed on Tuesday in a federal court in Brooklyn.
"Today's indictment exposes and disrupts an operation by the PRC (People's Republic of China) that threatens the safety and freedom of Chinese nationals residing in the United States on account of their pro-democracy beliefs and speech," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said.
Representatives for Wang were not immediately reachable for comment.
"The so-called accusations made by the U.S. is a pure fabrication," the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a written statement provided to Reuters.
"We urge the U.S. side to conduct a fair and lawful investigation, properly handle relevant cases, and safeguard the legal rights of the Chinese citizens involved."
Wang has provided information to the MSS since at least 2011, the indictment alleges. The MSS officials directed Wang to target Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence and Uyghur and Tibetan activists, it says.
(Reporting by Rami Ayyub and Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Ahmann, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Kenneth Maxwell)
Former President Donald Trump appears to believe in the power of positive reality more than empirically verifiable reality, according to a new CNN analysis.
CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza noted Trump's advice that Dr. Mehmet Oz "should declare victory" in the race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.
"It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they 'just happened to find," Trump said, as ballots were being counted.
Cillizza said it was a pattern for Trump.
"What Trump's statement makes clear is that he hasn't learned the right (or any) lessons from the 2020 election. (And no, I am not surprised.) For Trump -- in politics and life -- perception is all that matters," he wrote. "When you lose -- whether it's in the 2016 Iowa caucuses or the 2020 general election -- insist that you, in fact, won. Tell everyone you won enough times, and they might start to believe it."
Cillizza noted it was unlikely we would know the outcome for days and that an automatic recount may be triggered.
"Given all of that, the responsible thing to do is wait until all the ballots are counted (or recounted) before declaring victory. Which is the opposite of what Trump wants Oz to do," he noted.
Read the full analysis.
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