“What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.”— Ellen Glasgow

JOSEPH Biden was not yet declared as the winner in the U.S. Presidential Election 2020, but several Filipinos who voted for President Donald Trump have aired contrasting sentiments in anticipation of Mr. Trump’s possible exit from the White House on January 20, 2021.

“I supported and voted for President Trump because I believe he is the right leader that America wants and needs today,” reacted Norvin Versoza, 50, a hotel doorman who lives in Queens, New York City. “But I am ready to accept if President Trump will be defeated. Sayang siya. He is the only leader in the world who knows how to handle and improve the economy of America and the economy of the world.”

Versoza said, unlike other pro-Trump Filipinos who are restless and agitating after Mr. Trump’s “imminent” loss, he was unperturbed.

“This is only an election. We have lives to live; we have families to support. Let’s move on and go back to work. No need to feel bad as if our life depends on the election,” added Verzosa, a native of Ilog, Kabankalan, Negros Occidental in the Philippines.

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Mr Trump, he said, “would be a big loss to the United States.”

He said the President, 74, locked in 214 Electoral College votes as of the writing pending the results in key battleground states of Pennsylvania (20), Georgia (16), North Carolina (15), Arizona (11), and Nevada (6), “was a good leader before the pandemic.”

“Biden has been a politician for 46 years and did nothing to help the Americans,” Verzosa pointed out. “President Trump has been here for only four years and he already helped improve the economy. They don’t like President Trump because he is rich and a businessman.”

Meanwhile, Carmencita Dolar (not her real name), 68, believed Mr. Trump was cheated.

“They rigged the election because they hated Trump. Bill Gates controls all the computers that’s why Trump (was in danger of) lost,” said Dolar, who hails from Digos, Davao in the Philippines.

Gates is the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world, according to Forbes Magazine.

Dolar did not elaborate on her accusation against Gates but insisted the latter “conspired together with Fauci.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci is a physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984.

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Dolar, a Trump fanatic who lives in Astoria, Queens, did not explain how and why Gates and Fauci “conspired”.

She asked her boyfriend, Leandro Santander (not his real name), a Latino immigrant, to “get ready to join the people power just in case Trump needs us. We cannot accept Biden as president. He will lockdown our country for two weeks and we will all suffer.”

Santander responded: “We can never accept Biden. Over my dead body. They cheated.”

As a last-ditch strategy of claiming that he won the election, President Trump filed lawsuits to stop the counting in states where he was ahead. Observers said at the same time Mr. Trump litigates for recounting ballots where he is behind, is unlikely to change the final results.

As more and more votes get counted, it appears increasingly likely that Mr. Biden will win, albeit rather narrowly.

But even if Mr. Trump’s cries of fraud don’t change the outcome, they may have an even more lasting impact—on the legitimacy of the vote and the course of a Biden presidency.

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Mr. Trump’s political career has been defined by falsehoods that cast Democrats as cheaters and liars, reported the NBC News.

He reportedly rose to prominence in Republican circles as a chief propagator of the Obama “birther” conspiracy, which claimed that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

“In the 2016 election,” NBC News added, “Mr. Trump constantly spread lies about voter fraud before the election and then doubled down on those lies even after he won, claiming he would have won the popular vote, too, if not for such manipulation.”

Mr. Trump spent much of the 2020 election arguing that mail-in ballots would also lead to fraud and that the only way Democrats could win would be through cheating.

The author, who is now based in New York City, is a former editor of two dailies in Iloilo.