The Trump International Hotel has posted hiked-up room rates on its website for stays that coincide with President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
Room rates at the hotel, located in Washington, DC, begin at $2,225 per night around January 20, the day of the inauguration.
One of President Donald Trump’s hotels is trying to profit from guests looking for a room on or near January 20, the inauguration date for Joe Biden.
The website for the Trump International Hotel, located in Washington, DC, shows room rates for days around January 20 begin at $2,225 per night. On other days in January, rates begin at $476.
There is a two-night minimum stay requirement for all guests traveling during the time of the inauguration, according to the hotel website.
Other nearby Washington, DC, hotels are also jacking up prices, according to Politico, which first reported that Trump’s hotel is hiking up prices ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
The Trump International Hotel did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Trump has yet to concede to Biden, even though the race was called for the former vice president in early November. Instead, Trump unleashed a series of legal attacks, aiming to question the validity of the election results and allege widespread voter turnout. Of the dozens of lawsuits Trump’s filed so far, he won none.
It’s unclear whether Trump will attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony. The White House declined to comment.
Various Trump allies – including his wife and first lady Melania – have urged the president to concede. Others like Vice President Mike Pence have endorsed Trump’s refusal to concede. Just days after the race was called in November, Pence said the Trump administration plans to remain in place for another full term.
Pence asked a judge to stop a lawsuit that sought to give him more power in the upcoming congressional certification process on January 6. The vice president presides over a joint congressional session during which lawmakers officially certify the results of the presidential election.
The lawsuit would have encouraged a federal judge to grant Pence the power to reject results from individual states, potentially giving him the ability to overturn the election in Trump’s favor and grant him another full term.
“We came here to fight for our freedom,” said Melissa Regan from Pike County, Ohio. “We are tired of the corruption, of the stealing of this election.”
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
As President Donald Trump continues to falsely insist he won the presidential election, his supporters are rallying behind him.
They gathered in droves today in Washington, DC, to defend Trump’s unsubstantiated accusations of mass voter fraud that have been disproven many times over the last month.
President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and will take office January 20, a point that Trump has not yet explicitly acknowledged.
Trump’s supporters at the march also refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory, parroting the same baseless allegations the president has been making since the results came out in November.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC, on Saturday in support of President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Hundreds of members of the far-right Proud Boys were part of the crowd, according to WTOP journalist Alejandro Alvarez, who tweeted a video of a mass of men chanting “fuck antifa” as they walked past a bus advertising the march. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Proud Boys as a hate group with ties to white nationalism.
The crowd was largely made up of people who refuse to accept that President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated next month. January 20 will mark the start of Biden’s presidency.
Biden won the presidential election with 306 electoral votes, thanks to key battleground states such as Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. Trump secured just 232 electoral votes. All states have now certified their vote counts, finalizing the election results.
Since Biden’s victory weeks ago, Trump has refused to explicitly acknowledge his loss. In the hours after the race was called for Biden, Trump said the “election is far from over.”
He’s since doubled down and sought to overturn the results in state and federal courts across the country. The Trump campaign and the president’s allies have so far filed, and lost, dozens of lawsuits in multiple battleground states contesting the results.
And allegations of voter fraud have been struck down and disproven numerous times since Trump and his lawyers presented their arguments. The Trump-appointed Attorney General Bill Barr, who’s repeatedly positioned himself as one of the president’s strongest defenders, conceded earlier this month that neither the Justice Department nor the FBI found widespread evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The Supreme Court dealt the latest blow on Friday, when it struck down a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to overturn election results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia.
In the justices’ order throwing out the lawsuit, they cited a lack of “standing,” meaning that Paxton had not sufficiently proved that the state of Texas was harmed in any particular way that could be addressed by the court.
Still, Trump continues to claim otherwise, posting frequently on his personal Twitter account about widespread voter fraud and a “rigged” election. Saturday’s rally is proof that his baseless rhetoric is continuing to resonate with his constituents, despite all the evidence that says voter fraud did not occur.
Business Insider asked some people who attended why they are aligning themselves with Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. Here’s what they had to say.
Andrew Lichtenstein contributed reporting.
“If this election stands, we just do not have a country anymore. It’s as if we are saying, ‘Here, China, take it.'”Rosenblit is 61 and self-employed, and is from West Hartford, Connecticut.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
“I support the president. I know he won the election,” Seth Rosenblit told Business Insider. “They stole our vote, and I will not accept it. That’s why I’m here,” he continued. “It’s just unacceptable.”
“We the people are not going to stop, and I’m speaking for the majority of Americans.”
Fortey is a political activist from New York City.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
“I’m here to fight for our freedoms and to fight for my president against the fraud of this election,” Tina Fortey said.
“We must take our country back. Trump won,” she said, adding that she was “speaking for the majority of Americans,” though Biden won the election with 81 million votes, compared to Trump’s 74 million.
“Time will tell, but President Trump is always 10 steps ahead of everything.”
Quattrucci is a 23-year-old from Carmel, New York.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
“I’m here today because I believe in election integrity,” Dylan Quattrucci said, before repeating several false allegations about voting machines and election misconduct, which have previously been disproven.
“Dominion machines are responsible for miscounting thousands of votes, and suitcases were found with thousands of votes in the key swing states,” Quattrucci said, likely referring to a viral video showing Georgia election workers taking out large bins of ballots from underneath tables.
Georgia officials have investigated the videos and determined all the workers were following normal vote-counting procedures, and the bins were full of legal votes that had simply been stored under tables due to the room’s lack of space.
Trump supporters have also accused Dominion Voting Systems of enabling vast voter fraud in the country. In late November, the company tore into one of Trump’s lawsuits claiming “massive election fraud” and called the allegations “baseless,” “senseless,” and “physically impossible.” The company is not a defendant, but it’s mentioned in multiple instances throughout the 104-page Georgia lawsuit.
“I want a full audit of the vote so that we can have faith in free and fair elections in the future,” Quattrucci added, though most states are already required by law to conduct post-election audits, which so far have not found any instances of widespread voter fraud.
“People need to awaken.”
Schultheis is a 42-year-old contractor from Detroit, Michigan.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
“I’m here for liberty, justice, freedom, and the American dream. Biden is going to take all of those rights away,” Scott Schultheis said, incorrectly adding that “Trump won in a landslide.”
Schultheis described how he noticed Trump appeared to be ahead of Biden by 200,000 votes when he took a nap as election results were coming in on November 4. When Schultheis woke up, “he was losing.”
He continued: “Come on. The fraud is so obvious, it’s disgusting.”
In fact, Schultheis was describing a common misconception about how counties count ballots and report their election results. “Fraud” did not make Trump lose his lead — rather, Trump was never technically leading. Though he appeared to be ahead of Biden in several states on November 3, not enough votes had been counted at the time to accurately project a winner.
Trump’s apparent lead diminished as counties began to report more results, which consisted of legally cast votes that went largely for Biden.
Since the batches of legally cast mail-in votes in many states leaned disproportionately Democratic, Biden’s victory only became clear after those batches were counted and reported.
“There is going to be a bloodbath to pay for it.”
Warb is retired and lives in Monroe, North Carolina.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
“People spoke up when they voted, and that vote was robbed,” Donna Warb told Business Insider. “Everyone knows it and no one is doing anything about it.”
“So we are here in DC to just do the little bit that we can,” Warb continued. “If we do not win, if we do not get this corrected, we are going to be a communist country under a communist leader, and there is going to be a bloodbath to pay for it.”
“I’m a mom and a proud American, and I’m really scared about what is happening in this country.”
Morin is a 52-year-old mom working in IT in Albany, New York.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Business Insider
“We must speak up. For me, it’s not about an election. It’ about the truth, and good versus evil. I just never realized how much of this country was surrounded by evil,” Lisa Morin said.
“Trump is speaking on our behalf, he is our voice, and watching that voice try to be silenced, it’s just so sad,” she added.
Observers listen as procedural issues are argued during the process of recounting ballots from the November 3 election.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
A committee that’s part of the Republican-led state legislature in Wisconsin is refusing to pay two Wisconsin counties the $3 million they’re owed for conducting election vote recounts, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
It is unclear why these unnamed Republicans are withholding the money.
Residents in Dane and Milwaukee counties overwhelmingly voted for President-elect Joe Biden.
Two Wisconsin counties are being denied the money they’re owed for conducting election vote recounts, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The Trump 2020 campaign paid a total of $3 million to Dane and Milwaukee counties after demanding recounts there. President Donald Trump initially lost to Joe Biden by 0.6 percentage points. When the recount was finalized, Biden’s margin of victory had increased.
Candidates requesting officials to recount votes are responsible for the cost, according to Ballotpedia, unless the recount alters the result in favor of another candidate. In that case, the state will cover the recount cost.
The Trump campaign already paid the $3 million recount fee, but the state’s legislature’s budget committee, which has a Republican majority, is withholding it. Republican legislators have not specified why.
A letter from the state’s Joint Finance Committee said one of its 16 members opposed paying the two counties the $3 million they’re owed. The member was not named in the letter.
Dane County Board Chair Analiese Eicher tweeted out the letter, sent to her from Republican committee leaders Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. Mark Born.
“Just learned that the republicans are objecting to reimbursing Dane County for Donald Trump’s recount,” Eicher said. “Expenses were incurred. We did our job. Time to pay the bill. We’re not a contractor Trump and his allies in the WIGOP can stiff.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Wisconsin is just one of the states where Trump filed dozens of lawsuits alleging widespread voter fraud. He’s won none so far. Recount efforts across Wisconsin and other states have not altered the results of the 2020 election. Biden is expected to begin his presidency on January 20, the day he will be inaugurated into office.
Former White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with The 19th that “it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail.”
Conway’s remarks go against President Donald Trump, who is still refusing to concede to Biden and continues to share claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election to undermine the results.
With the comment, Conway joins a growing number of Republicans who are acknowledging Biden’s victory.
Former White House advisor Kellyanne Conway admitted that Democratic President-elect Joe Biden is the winner of the 2020 election, going against President Donald Trump, who has yet to concede.
“The president wants to exhaust all of his legal avenues, as he has made clear many times. His team is doing that, and that is his right,” Conway said in an interview with The 19th that aired Friday. “If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail. I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do.”
Trump has launched a series of legal attacks to contest the election results. So far, he’s won none of them.
Some close to Trump, including Vice President Mike Pence, have riled supporters by attempting to perpetuate the false notion that the administration will remain in place for another full term. Others like his wife, first lady Melania, and his daughter, senior White House advisor Ivanka, have urged him to accept the results, CNN reported last month.
With her comments aired Friday, Conway joins a growing number of Republicans who have publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory.
Despite the pushback from some of his closest advisors and family members, Trump is still refusing to accept the results.
The same day Conway’s interview dropped, Trump went on a tweeting spree, sharing variousclips from Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN that supported his baseless claims of voter fraud in the election.
