Trump to meet with Michigan leaders amid election fight

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi, Myles Udland, and Rick Newman discuss President Trump’s latest news on the Trump-Biden Presidential transition.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: Let's turn our attention to the world of politics. The Associated Press calling Georgia for Joe Biden, who I guess is already the president-elect, though not officially. Rick Newman joins us now to tell us why not officially and sort of where we stand, Rick, in this whole process.

The Rudy press conference yesterday just sort of to me encapsulates what's going on, which is kind of a clown show. But what's the actual serious thing that is happening with respect to deciding when the next president will be affirmed, I suppose, by the powers that be as the next president?

RICK NEWMAN: The serious thing that's happening is Trump is clearly trying to undermine the will of the voters. It's almost certainly not going to work. But I think everybody who cares about democracy and outcomes of elections in the United States needs to be paying attention to what's going on here. So what Trump is trying to do, most recently, is get representatives of the legislature in Michigan-- Republicans control the legislature in Michigan-- he's trying to get them to essentially invalidate the results of the election in Michigan, which Biden won.

And he wants-- this is a real backchannel effort that almost certainly won't work. But this-- no one has ever tried this before. So look, the votes are just against Trump. It's clear Joe Biden won the electoral college. But the electoral college does not make this official until December 14, so we are going to see these desperation moves, like we saw yesterday in that crazy press conference, at least up until December 14. And who knows, maybe even after that?

MYLES UDLAND: And Rick, I guess I would also ask, does this final episode, this final chapter I suppose of the Trump experience, does it change anything based on how people probably already thought this whole period went? And rarely do incumbents get voted out of office, and I think that's a strong enough signal in and of itself how the country felt about this. Does this last sort of gasp change anything for you about what this, I don't know, means for American politics or whatnot?

RICK NEWMAN: I think it does. I think that President Trump has demonstrated several weaknesses in the US governing system and in the US electoral system. I think it's really important to point out to anybody watching and anybody not watching that look, we had integrity in the 2020 election despite major efforts to undermine the election. Mostly by Trump, and probably also by all the other interferers we know about, Russia and China and Iran for example.

Look, the vote count worked. This was a good election. But we're watching a president try to undermine what the voters said they want to happen. So this is important going forward, because who knows? Some other aspiring dictator might try to do the same thing. Trump himself may run for office again in 2024. I actually don't think he will, but some people think that's on his mind and he's going to want another shot at it. So if he does, Trump is going to have to account for what he did at the end of his first term if he's asking voters to give him a second term in 2024. Trump has shown us a lot of weaknesses in the system, And I think it's important to address those.