Decision Desk HQ calls it at 8:50 am EST Friday, November 6th, 2020. CBS News calls it at 11:27 am, Saturday, November 7th, 2020.

I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

“Donald Trump emerged from the White House for his first post-election trip off campus since Election Day dressed for a round of golf after tweeting more unsupported accusations of widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania as former Vice President Joe Biden closed in on ousting him” reports The Independent.

“The president was wearing golf spikes, a windbreaker jacket, slacks and a white ‘Make America Great Again’ cap as he boarded an armored US Secret Service SUV outside the White House residence around 10am eastern time. He has not left the executive mansion since a Tuesday trip to his campaign headquarters in nearby Arlington, Virginia, and has not been in public since a Thursday evening press conference in the White House briefing room. With Pennsylvania and Nevada, still uncalled by the Associated Press, expected to upload thousands of counted votes around noon eastern time, Mr Trump could be informed of his political fate on the golf course in Sterling, Virginia. His lawyers are expected to speak to reporters around 11:30am eastern at a landscaping company, according to presidential tweets, in Philadelphia.”

Another new number 👇🏽 To those who have spammed our other numbers: it’s shameful that you don’t think it’s important to have integrity in our elections. It’s fundamental to our republic. Keep spamming. We will keep changing the number. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ILPJrqG42D

— Lara Trump (@LaraLeaTrump) November 7, 2020

“GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told multiple people on Capitol Hill and in the White House that he too had contracted the virus. Gaetz and his staff did not reply to a request for comment” – Politico.

Big press conference today in Philadelphia at Four Seasons Total Landscaping — 11:30am!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

Four Seasons Total Landscaping’s website says they’re “Solely Owned by Marie Siravo, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, Inc. is certified with the Minority Business Enterprise Council through the City of Philadelphia, PAUCP, a state organization that certifies you with, Septa, Fairmount Park, PENNDOT, Allegheny County & the port Authority.” Siravo has no listing on OpenSecrets.org as having donated to Trump. Facebook page doesn’t say anything about Trump… then again the background info doesn’t really matter since Trump is going to lose.

“If President Trump is on his way out the door, he’ll have almost limitless power to reward his friends, settle scores and stack boards and commissions with his allies during his final days in office. After defeat, there are no constraints on ordinary presidential powers between the election and the inauguration. Trump has shown a willingness to stretch the norms of what has been done and what can be done. So expect him to go out the way he came in.”

“Executive clemency: Presidents can wipe away or minimize past offenses with pardons, commutations, remissions or reprieves — like when Bill Clinton pardoned donor Marc Rich despite indictments over tax evasion and wire fraud. ‘Burrowing in’: Presidents can convert political appointees to career employees, and under certain circumstances, presidents can make recess appointments so personnel can serve into the succeeding administration. ‘Midnight rulemaking’: Outgoing presidents often rush to finalize the rules that administrations write to enact laws passed by Congress. Don’t forget: Trump can still fire people — and as Axios’ Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene have reported, he was already planning to push out FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper if he got a second term” – Axios.

Tens of thousands of votes were illegally received after 8 P.M. on Tuesday, Election Day, totally and easily changing the results in Pennsylvania and certain other razor thin states. As a separate matter, hundreds of thousands of Votes were illegally not allowed to be OBSERVED…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

….Bad things took place during those hours where LEGAL TRANSPARENCY was viciously & crudely not allowed. Tractors blocked doors & windows were covered with thick cardboard so that observers could not see into the count rooms. BAD THINGS HAPPENED INSIDE. BIG CHANGES TOOK PLACE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2020

“If Mr. Biden has 270 Electoral College votes at the end of the counting and litigation, President Trump will have a decision to make. We hope in that event he would concede gracefully. He has accomplished a great deal since descending on that Trump Tower escalator in 2015, including his historic first victory and a strong re-election performance when he was supposed to lose in a rout. We’d hate to see that legacy ruined by a refusal to accept the normal transfer of power. Mr. Trump can rightly say that he helped the GOP save its Senate majority, gain seats in the House, and save the country from a radical progressive agenda.”

“This is a considerable achievement, and it may look even better once Mr. Biden attempts to govern with an angry, impatient left. But Mr. Trump’s legacy will be diminished greatly if his final act is a bitter refusal to accept a legitimate defeat. Republican officials will turn away, and eventually so will the American public that wants to see the election resolved. Mr. Trump hates to lose, and no doubt he will fight to the end. But if defeat comes, he will serve himself and his country best by honoring America’s democratic traditions and leaving office with dignity” – WSJ Editorial Board.

Politico: “The president scared his own voters away from voting by mail, resulting in lopsided Democratic margins when those ballots were counted; and Republican lawmakers in several key states refused to allow those ballots to be counted early, resulting in delays that created an early mirage of the president winning because the votes tallied first were those most favorable to him. Trump has good reason to resent those mail votes: They made the ballot box more accessible; they created the illusion that victory was possible; then they shattered that illusion in agonizing fashion, every incremental dump of returns amounting to a slow twist of the knife.”

Daily Beast: “As Joe Biden builds his lead in Pennsylvania, QAnon followers are faced with their greatest challenge yet. For years, they’ve been told that—no matter how bad things looked for Trump on the outside—the president and the military had everything in hand. ‘Patriots were in control,’ Q told them in one popular motto, ‘Enjoy the show.’ Now, it’s starting to look to even some of the most dedicated followers—some of whom have sacrificed family in their devotion to the conspiracy theory—that QAnon might actually have been nonsense. And they aren’t sure what to do. ‘It’s hard to keep the faith when your wife and daughters have left you and we didn’t get the decisive MOAB win we deserved on election night!!’ complained one QAnon supporter on a QAnon forum on Friday, as QAnon believers tried to cheer one another up. ‘No win for me-PERIOD!!'”

“The disappointment of a likely Trump loss also comes at a tumultuous time internally for QAnon. Ron Watkins, an administrator on QAnon hub 8kun, whose technical access would theoretically let him post as Q or at least know Q’s identity, announced that he was stepping back from the site. Neon Revolt, an anonymous blogger who’s amassed a following in the QAnon community, implied this week that the ‘Q’ account was for sale online for $1 million, an idea that brought into question the conspiracy theory’s foundations.”

“Yesterday, Rolling Stone reported that Facebook had shut down Stop the Steal, a massive pro-Trump Facebook group propagating misinformation about the election and platforming violent rhetoric. In the hours since Stop the Steal was taken down, a slew of replacement Facebook groups have popped up with similar or slightly tweaked names hoping to avoid detection. One band of leftists, however, came up with a clever way to combat such misinformation: creating a fake Stop the Steal replacement group, attracting tens of thousands of Trump-supporting members; then renaming it Gay Communists for Socialism, adding a photo of Obama and Biden cavorting through the White House with rainbow flags to drive the point home. Trolls then barraged the group with anti-Trump memes. Members of the group were confused, to say the least.”

“Some members, clearly panicked at the prospect of being publicly associated with gay people (or socialists) (or Communists), posted that they had called Facebook customer service to request they be removed from the group. ‘What in the hell?? I would never invite anyone to anything such named,’ one poster wrote. ‘How the hell did I start seeing posts from this sick group?’ another mused. ‘I am soooooo confused right now,’ said another, against a prototypically boomer Facebook meme background. Fortunately, leftists were on hand to helpfully explain to them what was going on: ‘You’re gay now,’ said one” – Rolling Stone.

Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, has told associates that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, apparently first telling colleagues that he was COVID positive after the election, Bloomberg Quint reports.

It isn’t clear when the 61-year-old Meadows tested positive.  He was not visible during Trump’s 2:30 a.m. speech when he falsely claimed he won the election.

Meadows is the latest in a string of White House personnel and Trump associates who have tested positive since a superspreader event Trump hosted in the White House Rose Garden on September 26th to introduce Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee.

Trump proclaimed that media coverage of the coronavirus would evaporate on November 4th, after the election.  That has not come to pass.

Presumptive President-elect Joe Biden addressed the United States Friday night from Wilmington, Delaware, asking for patience from the American people during the long, “numbing” vote tallying and calling on the nation to put partisan bickering and animosity behind to help improve the nation.

“Democracy works,” Biden said.  “Your vote will be counted.  I don’t care how hard people try to stop it. I will not let it happen.  The people will be heard.”

Biden urged Americans to unite after a hard-fought campaign in which tempers flared frequently.

“In America, we hold strong views.  We have strong disagreements, and that’s okay,” Biden commented, referring to the political divide in the nation.  “Strong disagreements are inevitable in a democracy, and strong disagreements are healthy.  They’re a sign of vigorous debate of deeply held views.”

Five members of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization have tested positive for the coronavirus ten days after the team won the World Series, Yahoo Sports reports.

The cluster happened after third basemen Justin Turner was pulled off the field in the eighth inning of the decisive Game 6 when the team received notice that he tested positive for the coronavirus.

After the Dodgers secured the championship, Turner reappeared on the field to celebrate with his teammates and posed in the team championship photograph.  He also continued celebrating with the team in the locker room after the game.

Three days after current Oval Office denizen Donald Trump said that coverage of the coronavirus pandemic wouldn’t get any media attention, the United States set another record for COVID cases, logging 125,552 confirmed cases Friday, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

As reported earlier, another data aggregator, worldometers.info, showed that the United States had surpassed 10 million cases since the pandemic began.  Worldometers registered more than 132,500 confirmed cases in the country Friday.

COVID Tracking Project logged 1,186 fatalities Friday, while worldometers reported 1,248.  It marks the fifth consecutive day exceeding 1,000 fatalities.  Texas led the nation with more than 120 deaths.

The number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus, as tracked by the COVID Tracking Project, jumped by 1,500 to 54,824, the most since the end of July.

MSNBC’s marquee show host Rachel Maddow has had a close contact test positive for the coronavirus and will isolate at home until she’s cleared to return to work.

pic.twitter.com/rZoiT1Upbd

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) November 6, 2020

Maricopa County, Arizona released the votes of another bucket of 70,000 ballots Friday night, with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden receiving the minority of votes in this group.

Of the 70,000 released, Biden won 31,433 votes, or 45.1%.  Trump won 38,338 votes, or 54.9%.  That decreased Biden’s lead in the state from 36,800 to 29,861.

Maricopa County has approximately 150,000 ballots remaining, with another 30-40,000 in other Arizona counties.  Before tonight’s announcement, Trump needed to win in excess of 58% of the outstanding votes to overtake Biden’s advantage.  After adding in this group of ballots, Trump needs to win 65.7% of the remaining 190,000 to tie Biden.