This is a rush transcript from “Special Report” November 5, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Welcome to New York. This is Fox News continuing coverage of DEMOCRACY 2020. I'm Bret Baier.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: And I'm Martha MacCallum.

Breaking tonight, we are waiting for the president to speak over the course of this evening, about a half an hour from now, going to be the first time we've seen him, Bret, since the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

BAIER: This as Joe Biden is still six electoral college votes away from the presidency as the ballot count continues in a handful of key states almost two full days after the closing of the polls. Biden sits on the precipice of victory.

While President Trump and his army of attorneys filed legal challenges in several of those states, the Biden camp saying the president is trying to create a cloud of confusion. The president's people insist Democrats are trying to steal the election.

MACCALLUM: So, new vote totals in Nevada have increased Joe Biden's advantage. New numbers from Georgia and Pennsylvania have narrowed the president's lead there.

BAIER: We have reporters in all of those key spots and expert analysis to break it all down for you. We begin tonight though with chief White House correspondent John Roberts and the latest from the Trump team. Good evening, John.

JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good evening to you Bret and Martha. And the latest from the Trump camp is that in a half an hour's time, the president will come to the Brady Briefing Room to make remarks and hopefully take a few questions as well.

Yesterday, the president let his campaign do the talking but after Joe Biden came out for the second time today, the president thought it was time for him to have something to say on a day that was marked by a flurry of legal action by his campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: President Trump stayed out of public view again today but in a statement through his campaign saying, if you count the legal votes, I easily win the election. If you count the illegal and late votes, they can steal the election from us.

The Trump campaign fighting on two points, making sure no illegal ballots get counted and attempting to eliminate extensions that allow ballots received after Election Day in some states to be counted.

In a tweet censored by Twitter, the president insisting any vote that came in after election date will not be counted.

In Pennsylvania today, a victory then setback for the Trump campaign. A judge ordered campaign observers be allowed within six feet of vote counters. The Trump officials say, they weren't allowed the access the judge authorized.

PAM BONDI, FORMER FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL: We have just filed a motion in general court for immediate injunctive relief.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: We will not let the people of Pennsylvania go without having an election (INAUDIBLE) for every single ballot.

ROBERTS: In Nevada, the Trump campaign filed a federal lawsuit, claiming as many as 10,000 people who no longer live in the Silver State cast ballots.

RIC GRENELL, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: It is unacceptable in this country to have illegal votes counted and that is what's happening in the state of Nevada.

ROBERTS: The state Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy firing back, in a shameful display, partisan hacks attacked the integrity of Nevada's voting system without evidence, threatening to disenfranchise the voices of their fellow Nevadans in the process.

And the legal setback for the president in Georgia today, a judge dismissing a Trump campaign lawsuit that claimed late arriving mail-in ballots were counted.

In Arizona, a glimmer of hope for the president as he cut into Biden's lead by 11,000 in the latest tranche of mail-in votes. His campaign, still confident of victory.

DAVID BOSSIE, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: If the current trends continue as we have seen because we follow the science, President Trump is going to overtake Joe Biden and we are going to win Arizona.

ROBERTS: The Trump campaign also expects to prevail in Pennsylvania, though there has been a subtle shift in how they're saying it.

Yesterday, the campaign manager Bill Stepien outright declaring victory.

Today, still confident but not so sanguine about it.

BILL STEPIEN, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER: At day's end, we feel like the president will win in Pennsylvania again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: And in a sign of what might lie ahead, Trump campaign officials told Fox News today that they plan to provide to the Department of Justice and local law enforcement authorities in Nevada a list of thousands of names of people they say voted illegally because they were not residents of the Silver State. We'll see what the president has to say about all of this scheduled for 6:30, Bret.

BAIER: John Roberts live on the North Lawn. John, thanks.

MACCALLUM: So, Joe Biden is urging patience tonight saying that he is still not declaring victory. We saw him shortly about an hour and a half, two hours ago, but if actions speak louder than words, it sure looks like he is getting closer to all of this. There's still a lot of work to be done. You know, in fact in Pennsylvania, they still have hundreds of thousands of votes.

BAIER: As we just heard from the Secretary of State.

MACCALLUM: We just heard from the Secretary of State. Let's go to Peter Doocy with the Biden campaign tonight in Wilmington, Delaware. Good evening, Peter.

PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Martha. Joe Biden is at home right now. We don't expect to see him again tonight, but the campaign is telling us that if necessary, he will address election results. There is a lid on the Biden movements right now. They are saying that it is possible that that lid will be lifted if there is a major development. We did see him earlier this afternoon. He gave some very brief remarks just a minute and 45 seconds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We continue to feel very good about where things stand.

DOOCY: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris spent this afternoon inside a Wilmington theater being briefed about COVID-19.

BIDEN: We're reminded again the severity of this pandemic.

ROBERTS: As he spoke, campaign officials prepared for good news.

JENNIFER O'MALLEY DILLON, BIDEN CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Our data shows that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.

DOOCY: The campaign manager doesn't know which state is most likely to push them over 270 electoral votes. But here's as the Biden campaign sees it, in Nevada, they expect ups and downs in the vote total today then expect to win. In Arizona, they expect more favorable data tonight and tomorrow then expect to win. In Pennsylvania, they anticipate closing the gap with Trump then passing him and winning by a sizeable margin. In Georgia, they see a true tossup. In North Carolina, they see returns really tight and leaning towards Trump.

BIDEN: The process is working. The account is being completed and we'll know very soon.

DOOCY: Biden sends supporters a warning, this work could stretch on for weeks. Now, his team is asking for cash as they prep for court.

BOB BAUER, BIDEN CAMPAIGN ADVISER: The Trump campaign is continually alleging irregularity failures of the system and fraud without any basis.

DOOCY: As Republicans push to get closer to counters in Pennsylvania, a Biden spokesman says, we don't care if you're observers are 18 feet away or

15 feet away or six feet away, as long as election officials can do their jobs. Biden officials still haven't had any contact with Trump officials, something that would precede a concession call as both sides signal they're in for the long haul.

DILLON: Folks are going to need to stay patient and stay calm.

DOOCY: Biden believes it's only a matter of time.

BIDEN: Democracy sometime is missing. It sometimes requires a little patience as well.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DOOCY: Tuesday night's stage is still sitting stagnant behind it's inside this secret service perimeter, but were told that the campaign only has this space booked through tomorrow as of right now. And there have been signs of life with that stage. A few hours ago, some officials came out to test audio and light equipment, blasting a few chords of a Foo Fighter's song, Times Like These, Martha.

MACCALLUM: Thank you, Peter. Peter Doocy in Wilmington.

BAIER: Officials in Pennsylvania say they still have hundreds of thousands of ballots left to count. Let's go live to Bryan Llenas in Wilkes-Barre.

Good evening, Bryan.

BRYAN LLENAS, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Brett, Martha, good evening. The counting continues despite efforts by the Trump campaign to try to halt the counting at least temporarily. The latest numbers they keep being updated, but here they are in terms of the outstanding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

Right now, 326,000 ballots have yet to be counted in Pennsylvania. Now, this is a big deal because the president's lead in Pennsylvania right now is about 90,000 votes. And based on the data of these 2.6 million mail-in ballots in total, about 77 percent of the mail-in ballots are going for former Vice President Joe Biden. So, all eyes are on this.

You know, of these 326,000 outstanding balance, 84,000 are in Philadelphia.

Another 35,000 are in Pittsburgh. These are Democratic strongholds and by the way, the margins for the mail-in ballots are the same even in the big red counties where President Trump has win -- has won in a -- is winning in a big way.

So, all of this as obviously there is this flurry of lawsuits regarding Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Convention Center mail-in ca -- they are continuing to count there. We have a live feed of that counting.

The Trump campaign filed a federal lawsuit trying to stop the counting in the Philadelphia Convention Center claiming that poll watchers -- Republican poll watchers were not allowed inside.

Our Eric Shawn just reported last hour that he has sources that tell him -- well, poll watchers themselves that tell him that that is not true, that Republican polls -- poll watchers are inside watching the county in that Philadelphia Convention Center.

And the Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, she said -- well, she talked about the safety and the security of with mail-in ballots, listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATHY BOOCKVAR, SECRETARY OF STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA: Voters have to apply.

They're checked against either social security database or the PennDOT database, they're checked against their voter record to make sure that they're a qualified voter, and they are who they say they are. They cast their ballot. And then they're checked again when the ballot is received, that they were actually an approved voter, very secure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LLENAS: In terms of the issues that these Republican losses are bringing up, it's the poll observer access issues, it's improper vote by mail pre- canvassing allegations, provisional ballot issues and but the main real thing here I think that's going to have the biggest impact is the Pennsylvania's extended three day mail-in ballot deadline.

And the Secretary of State, she gave us a clue as to how many mail-in ballots have been segregated, how many mail-in ballots arrived after 8:00 p.m. and will arrive before 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. Those ballots are important because those are the ballots are up for grabs in a potential legal lawsuit.

And she said that it is any -- it is nowhere near the 60,000 late mail-in ballots that came in during the primary, nowhere near that number.

So, you know, in terms of the kind of challenges we can see, it's important to remember the president won Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes in 2016. Every vote is going to matter but that number, the separated -- the segregated ballots is going to be a big deal as we see these numbers update throughout the night, Bret, Martha.

BAIER: Bryan Llenas live Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Bryan, thanks.

MACCALLUM: So, let's bring in former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway. She was also the 2016 Trump Campaign manager. Kellyanne, good to have you with us tonight, thanks for being here.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, FORMER COUNSELOR TO U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: A pleasure. Thank you.

MACCALLUM: So, we're hearing that the president's going to speak at 6:30, any idea what -- can you -- can you give us the frame of what we're going to be hearing from him tonight?

CONWAY: I can actually. The president is going to address the state of the race from his perspective and his campaign's perspective. You've heard a little bit of that today from the campaign senior officials from those who were out in the key states. Martha and Bret, who are there to file lawsuits to explain where they see the trend is going.

The campaign feels very good about the trajectory in a place like Pennsylvania. They feel they've held that lead in North Carolina. They feel that Georgia will hold. They like what's happening in Arizona and they like what's happening in Nevada given the fact that as you are clearly showing, the vice president is still ahead in

But the president is also going to hold to account a lot of the media pollsters who were wrong yet again, because he sees it as a pre-election suppression of the vote. If you're standing in line for four hours somewhere and you're being told by major media outlets, the Washington Post, ABC News that Joe Biden is going to win, your state of Wisconsin by

17 points, what is your incentive to stand in line to vote for the "looser"?

And so, he's going to -- he's actually going to go through some of those numbers where I think is pretty clever.

The president is also going to tell everybody what happened this election down ballot, it was a great night for the Trump agenda and the Trump administration and the Trump policies. In that, they picked up about a dozen new female house members for the Republicans, down ballot the Democrats got destroyed in their quest to take over the Senate, to make gains in the House, to be more progressive frankly, quote unquote.

And also, to take over some of the state legislatures where redistricting will happen over the next 10 years. It's the Republicans who flipped the New Hampshire state legislature, the Montana state legislature and a few more are outstanding.

So, the president's going to do -- he's also just going to talk about some of the numbers that we face in the states. And for all the -- for all the talk about where's the president, well, how come we haven't heard from him?

We have heard from Joe Biden yesterday and last night, but did he say very much?

His campaign manager is out there saying "Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States". That should not be said because we are still counting votes.

And just as Joe Biden is telling people to be patient, I've been saying that for since election night. If they spent three years investigating the president, impeaching this president, we can certainly wait for three hours, three days, three weeks or three months. However long it takes for every legal and on time vote to be counted.

Why though did Pennsylvania move Election Day? Your reporter is absolutely right, this very troubling unilateral move by a couple of the Democrats who have power in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, moving Election Day two days later that is for the rest of us is very unseemly. And we hope unconstitutional (INAUDIBLE), there be no reason to do that.

People have plenty of time to cast their ballots, you saw a record number of people cast their ballots in person, by mail and yet, in Pennsylvania they felt the need to push the few extra days.

MACCALLUM: Kellyanne, the president came out on election night and said that he had won while there were still all this ballots to be counted.

CONWAY: Sure, yes, I think what the president was meaning there is that he had one meeting earlier in the night, he had the race won. People were projecting that some of the states that were supposed to turn blue like Florida, Ohio, Texas. Three states were Michael Bloomberg himself alone spent $100 million to turn those seats blue and they're still bright red.

In fact, the Democrats picked up no new seats in the tax -- in Texas in Congress for example. And I think he was talking about based on the projections. I mean, you saw the New York Times famous needle start the day out with the president having a nine percent chance overall of being re- elected president.

(CROSSTALK)

BAIER: Right.

CONWAY: They move the 25, 30 percent, then, it was going up. And state-by- state it was looking better for the president, including in places like Georgia that is yet to be called -- Pennsylvania is yet to be called.

BAIER: Right.

CONWAY: So, he was basing it on that.

BAIER: Kellyanne, the -- you've got cases -- state cases pending in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Now, a federal case today in Pennsylvania as well. We heard from Ric Grenell in Nevada today. Take a listen to this, and then, the Clark County registrar responding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRENELL: We've asked Clark County for answers, they have no answers. They continue to count illegal votes. That is unacceptable and it's giving legal people a sense that the system is corrupt.

JOE GLORIA, REGISTRAR OF VOTERS, CLARK COUNTY: My responses that we are not aware of any improper ballots that are being processed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: In each one of these states -- each one of the state officials or county officials has come out and said, we don't have any indications that there's evidence of any fraud in either any of these cases. Will there be some layout of the evidence in each one of these places?

CONWAY: I have been told by the campaign there are instances. And we've all seen the anecdotal information of bags of ballots being found, I guess along with Santa Claus' sock of a toy request. We see in some places that new ballots being found are overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. I think that raises suspicion for some people.

But my premise is the same. It's not a complaint, it's not a conspiracy, it's context.

We just had an election with unprecedented numbers for both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. They busted through previous numbers. We also have an election in a year of 2020 which is wrapped with uncertainty where we cast ballots in a very different way, in a very robust way than we've ever done before.

So, why is everybody rushing to close the book on the 2020 presidential race? Why can't we just wait and see if everything is done properly, if it's on the up and up, if every vote that was cast was, in fact, legal and on time? That's all we're asking for. The president, the White House put out a statement earlier today saying exactly that.

So, I think you will hear about instances of fraud and I think you will have people continue to raise questions about the integrity of the process.

But for me, the main thing I'll tell you is what I've told the president.

Let's make sure that the votes that were legally cast get counted. That's first and foremost.

Now, I see people trying to call races, I see rumors on Twitter that this network's going to call this, and that network, that paper is going to call that, why? Donald Trump has already outperformed all of the shoddy backward junk science predictions of him of it being an early night on Tuesday of the major blue wave, the blue tsunami of a major repudiation of all things Trump and the Trump presidency, the Trump agenda.

None of that has happened. In fact, down-ballot, his party has done very well. He has expanded the base of the party, more African-American, Hispanic votes. We got more women elected, a high Jewish vote -- Jewish American vote in many places for the president.

And so, his expansion that way really -- I think that that's important the president's going to talk about that, but the most important thing is to count all of the legally cast ballots before we close the book in election.

Particularly because -- and the president's going to mention this tonight.

Particularly because so, all the pre-election polls were so dead wrong.

So, if you compare how badly he was supposed to do with how well he's still doing and he's still in the fight, then, I think we deserve -- democracy deserves for each of us to take a deep breath, be patient, and make sure the process is completed.

MACCALLUM: Kellyanne, thank you.

BAIER: Thank you, Kellyanne.

MACCALLUM: Good to have you here tonight.

So, at this hour, we are awaiting as we just spoke with Kellyanne about, the president is going to make remarks. It looks like they'll be in the press room this evening from the White House.

BAIER: We'll bring it to you live when it happens. But first, when SPECIAL REPORT continues, here is some of what our Fox affiliates around the country are covering tonight.

Fox nine in the Twin Cities, as a judge grants a motion to join the cases of the four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd into one case. Floyd, of course, died May 25th while in custody of Minneapolis police.

MACCALLUM: Fox 29 in Philadelphia as the district attorney vows to make his own decision about whether to charge two young officers in the shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr. Larry Krasner says he will not rely solely on the police investigation.

BAIER: And this is a live look at Orlando, our Fox affiliate, Fox 35. I think we have it there. One of the big stories there tonight. Disney Cruise Line joins dozens of competitors in extending the suspension of all voyages from U.S. ports through the end of the year because of the coronavirus.

Cruise Lines International Association trade group of companies, including Disney, Carnival, and Royal Caribbean, says ships will not sail until at least December 31st.

That's tonight's live look "OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY" from SPECIAL REPORT. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Well, we are awaiting President Trump in the White House briefing room. You look live there as reporters are starting to gather. We're told it's about 6:30 when he'll make some remarks. And we had a little preview on the state of the race from Kellyanne Conway. He will talk about where things are now and where he thinks they're going.

MACCALLUM: So, the president has made it clear that he is pressing a number of issues in many of these outstanding states. We saw his people today in Pennsylvania. We saw them in Nevada and Atlanta, pushing for more transparency in the evaluation of these votes as they come in.

As Kellyanne Conway just pointed out, we are in an extraordinary circumstance because of COVID-19, and we have voted in a way that has been overwhelming, in terms of the mail-in ballot, and there is a lot to keep a close eye on tonight.

We've also heard from Pennsylvania that they've got hundreds of thousands of votes that they're still looking at. They're about 86 in, in Pennsylvania.

BAIER: The Biden campaign is very confident where they stand. They believe as this count continues that they are going to get over the 270 Electoral College votes and are planning for such.

Let -- let's look at some of the other headlines tonight. The U.S. is coming off its largest COVID-19 infection day since the pandemic began.

More than 100,000 new cases were reported Wednesday. The per-day average is now record 86,000 new cases.

MACCALLUM: AstraZeneca says that it hopes to show its COVID-19 vaccine is effective by the end of this year. The company says it's ramping up manufacturing, so it can supply hundreds of millions of doses in January.

BAIER: Stocks up again today big. The Dow Jones surging 543, the S&P 500 finishing ahead 67, the NASDAQ jumped 300. A lot of people talking that, that was about the possibility of divided government and maybe a GOP Senate. That's the word on Wall Street, but we'll see.

MACCALLUM: Law enforcement and government officials are bracing for more election-related protests at this hour. We've already seen demonstrations in a handful of cities. Correspondent David Lee Miller shows us tonight from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID LEE MILLER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: In Philadelphia, Thursday, dueling demonstrations were held outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where ballots are being counted. Pro-Biden protesters outnumbered supporters of the president, the two sides separated by barricades were peaceful.

Wednesday night in Phoenix, hundreds of the president's supporters rallied outside the Maricopa County election center. The group criticized the decision by Fox News to call the state for Joe Biden. Demonstrators say the president can still win the state and demanded a fair count.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to come every day until every ballot matches.

MILLER: Trump backers also protested outside a ballot counting facility in Detroit. Angry demonstrators banged on windows, demanding to be led inside to observe the count.

In New York City, a pro-Biden demonstration turned violent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are in the streets right now because we want equality for everyone.

MILLER: More than 50 people were arrested, including this woman, who after screaming at an NYPD sergeant, spit in his face.

In Portland, Oregon, an anti-Trump protest erupted into violence.

Protesters threw bottles and broke windows. In Minneapolis, hundreds of mostly peaceful protesters blocked traffic on I-94, they marched to voice opposition against President Trump as well as racial inequality.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILLER: And here in New York City, like elsewhere in the country, police are preparing for more protests that could turn violent. The governors of at least 10 states have now activated the National Guard to if necessary assist local law enforcement. Bret.

BAIER: David Lee Miller, thank you.

As you see on the side of the screen, we had it on the side of the screen the list of all of the states were watching and the votes that are separating, the differential. And that is really the whole story there in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.

We could air at Arizona as the Trump campaign is saying they want us to switch that call, we're sticking with that call. But there is a split and it's getting closer in Arizona.

MACCALLUM: So, let's go to Alicia Acuna, who is standing by with that story for us this evening on our continuing coverage of "DEMOCRACY 2020", which goes on. Good evening to you, Alicia.

ALICIA ACUNA, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Martha. Good evening, Bret. The fury by Republicans right now going all the way to the White House has really been growing today.

The head of the Arizona GOP Party, Kelli Ward calling on Fox News to retract the decision made by the Fox News decision desk to call Arizona in favor of the former vice president. Let's take a look at the spread right now as it stands.

Biden continues to lead here. However, the president has tightened it a bit in the last 24 hours. Today, Arizona Republican leaders held a news conference, expressing confidence that the president will overcome the deficit here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLI WARD, CHAIR, ARIZONA REPUBLICAN PARTY: Trump was just behind by

200,000 votes. There were hundreds and thousands of votes were still out.

Hundreds of thousands of votes that are still out, and even still today, there are hundreds of thousands of votes. And I can tell you that it is trending in the direction of President Donald J. Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACUNA: This morning, 10 voters filed a lawsuit against elections officials in Maricopa County, accusing them of giving sharpies to voters to use on their ballots. And that those ballots were then rejected because the ink bled through them or the machines could not count them.

I asked the Arizona secretary of state about the sharpie issue today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATIE HOBBS, SECRETARY OF STATE, ARIZONA: It does not matter what pen you use to mark your ballot with. Your ballot is going to be counted. Even if there's a problem with the tabulator reading your ballot because of the pen you use or there's lots of reasons that a tabulator might not be able to read a ballot.

If you use red pen, it says in the instructions when you get your ballot at home not to use a red pen, but the tabulator can't read that. But your ballot still going to be counted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALICIA ACUNA, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Bret and Martha, Secretary Hobbs says that right now there just under 450,000 outstanding ballots in the state of Arizona, the bulk of which are here in Maricopa County. The secretary of state believes that they will finish counting this weekend. Back to you guys.

MACCALLUM: Thank you, Alicia. Alicia Acuna in Arizona.

BAIER: John Roberts standing by at the White House. We are just minutes, we believe, away from President Trump making a statement there. John is in the briefing room. John, what can you tell us?

JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: It feels like a long time since we've been here in the briefing room with anybody from the Trump administration, let alone the president. But we are expecting him. We were expecting him about a minute ago. He typically runs about 15, maybe 20 minutes late. But some of the things that we'll want to ask the president is when will you be satisfied that the votes have been fairly counted. If you get to 270, will you declare victory? Conversely, if Joe Biden gets to 270, will you accept concession of defeat? And if not, then what's the plan from there?

Because the president and his campaign have been making the case all day today in various lawsuits, some of which were rejected -- he had one rejected in Georgia -- that illegal votes are being counted. There was another one that was filed in Nevada. Of course, there have been suits filed in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and probably a lot more to come as well.

So what would constitute an illegal ballot in the president's mind, where's the evidence for these illegal ballots, when would he be satisfied that the vote would be counted?

There are a lot of ancillary questions as well. Don't forget he's talked about the fact that Christopher Wray may not be long for his job after the election. He hinted the other in Opa-locka, Florida, that Anthony Fauci may fall under the axe when all of the dues starts to clear from this election.

So Bret, we've got at least a month's worth of questions to ask the president, and we don't know if he's going to take questions or if Joe Biden did, he is simply going to come down and make a statement and then go back to at the Oval Office or the residence. But we should find out sometime in the next few minutes.

BAIER: So on election morning, the hours after election night, there was a teleprompter set up and it seemed like it was going to be a formal statement. He obviously said other things. Is this likely to be a Q and A?

It doesn't look like it's a teleprompter set up.

ROBERTS: One thing I can tell you is there's no teleprompter in this room.

As you know, Bret, you've got to memorize your material, know your material, and deliver it. So I expect that the president might read some sort of a written statement.

And again, we don't know. Will he just walk off and walk back towards the Oval Office, or will he stick around for a while? My sense is that he probably wants to answer a few questions. He likes the give-and-take with the White House press corps, and he knows that there are a lot of pressing questions to ask, so we'll see if he does that and what he has to say when he does.

MACCALLUM: We spoke with Kellyanne Conway, John, a few minutes ago, and she offered a bit of a preview to what she said would be part of the president's comments, and that has to do with polling and what they see as suppressive polling that came out that may have indicated to some voters that it was a lost cause in places like where we saw the "Washington Post"

plus 17, I guess it was, poll in Wisconsin. Do you expect that that's what

-- that we'll hear that impart?

ROBERTS: The one thing I've learned about President Trump is if he has a grievance, we are likely to hear about it. And I heard it all over the campaign trail across the country, the president every time he talked about what he called the fake news polls, were that he believed that there they were suppression poles. They weren't in any way, shape, or form even related to the reality on the ground there. There were a couple of polling organizations that got things pretty accurately.

But when I saw that poll that said President Trump 17 down in Wisconsin, I'm not sure in what world that would ever occur, but that could potentially send a signal to voters that it's a lost cause, don't bother coming out. But I'll tell you, I think that that notion was overridden by the enthusiasm that the president generated on the campaign trail. I was at a rally in the closing days in Green Bay. There were thousands of people who were out there. The weather was cold, the weather was blustery, and they were still there. There were thousands of people in Omaha, Nebraska.

There were thousands of people in Kenosha and Traverse City, Rochester, Minnesota, they limited it to 250 at the actual event, but there were thousands of people who were waiting outside just to show their support.

So I'm not sure that this idea of suppression polls actually worked in the real world, but the president has got a case, I truly believe, that the polling was so horribly inaccurate the most part, as it was in 2016. And I've said to the people in the campaign -- talked with people on the campaign trail about this, that pollsters still have not figured out for the most part how to accurately read Trump voters.

BAIER: Yes.

ROBERTS: Unless he runs again -- unless he loses and runs again in 2024, they won't have a chance to really figure it out.

BAIER: John, we are looking at the key states. Georgia is now only a 9,400 vote differential with the president leading there. That has been shrinking as more of the Fulton County and Dekalb County vote around Atlanta has come in. That also has produced David Perdue, the Republican senator, to go under 50 percent, which would throw that into two runoffs, possibly for the balance of power in the Senate.

It's funny that you say we haven't heard from him, and you think about every day with President Trump, oftentimes we hear from him two, three times a day in the run-up to this election. It's been a couple days.

ROBERTS: And I think that he's been waiting for something significant to happen, such as, if Arizona were to go his way or if Nevada were to go his way. But I think you saw Joe Biden come out for the second time today, and yesterday he allowed Joe Biden to hit the news cycle because his campaign surrogates were out there, they were really sort of leading the charge for the president in terms of where this was going to go as far as the vote count goes, as far as lawsuits go.

But I think when Biden came -- I was told yesterday that if Biden came out, the president will probably come out. He didn't, so when Biden came out today, I think the president said let's go out, I've got to get in front of the cameras.

MACCALLUM: You wonder what may have changed, too, because earlier there was a suggestion that he was not going to come out this evening, and then that flipped around as well. So something has prompted him to want to get in front of the American people tonight.

ROBERTS: Yes, And don't forget, as these races tighten, he may have little opportunity in the next few hours to come out and say something before the story starts to take off in another direction. We're all paying attention to Pennsylvania, and a lot of attention on Arizona and Nevada. But if he loses Georgia, that's unrecoverable. And when is the last time Georgia went Democratic? 1992 with Bill Clinton. So the fact that the margin is so close in Georgia is extraordinary. I lived there for five, six years. And the fact -- I saw the tone and tenor and Democrat graphic makeup and the politics of the state beginning to change.

But for a Republican president to lose Georgia, first of all, it's going to destroy his chances of taking back the Oval Office. And then secondly, what a huge signal that is about the direction that that part of the south is going in. So I know that the president would desperately love to hang onto Georgia, as we see those numbers narrow, there's a real question as to whether he will. So for all this attention being paid on Pennsylvania and Arizona and Nevada, I think Georgia really is the race to watch.

MACCALLUM: It may come down to Arizona and Georgia.

BAIER: John, we will get you seated so you can get in position. We'll head back once the president gets in the room. Thank you.

MACCALLUM: Let's bring in Chris Stirewalt politics editor here at FOX News.

Chris, good to have you with us tonight as we wait for the president.

CHRIS STIREWALT, FOX NEWS POLITICAL EDITOR: Good evening.

MACCALLUM: Your thoughts?

STIREWALT: Well, it's exciting, right? This is election week, and we are here, and as John points out, yes, Georgia getting very close. And the margin of Pennsylvania, you have to remember in Pennsylvania, when you see that number, it looks like a pretty big number. There are hundreds of thousands of votes that are still out. And there are hundreds of thousands of votes that are from the major metropolitan area in the east and in the west. So there is a lot of fluidity there. And this game is afoot. And the president, I think John is also quite right to point out, this is maybe the best chance that he has get out ahead of shifts in those numbers and shifts in the race to try to get ahold of a narrative that is sort of getting away from him.

BAIER: What about Nevada? We heard that Clark County is not coming in until tomorrow or later?

STIREWALT: I guess they're hitting the slots, I don't know. No, I'm kidding. I know that they are working very hard and this is very challenging for everybody in the COVID election and everything, and has really gone, I should point out, so well, given all of the possible chaos and given all of the possible problems, things have really gone well. And it's frustrating that the count is so agonizingly slow. It is hard for us who are used to election night to live in election week, but they have done a great job.

But no, it doesn't sound that we are going to get anything more from Nevada, and that doesn't look like a callable margin to me. And there is still too much vote out there to make a call at this moment obviously. So then we start looking elsewhere on the map. And it won't be North Carolina

-- well, never say never in 2020, but it doesn't look like North Carolina is going to ripen up at any time soon but they are slow counting and going easy. So we're looking at Georgia, we're looking Pennsylvania, we're looking at Pennsylvania, we're looking at Georgia, and the game remains very interesting.

BAIER: And you're still positive on Arizona?

STIREWALT: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Arizona is doing just what we expect it to do, and we remain serene and pristine.

MACCALLUM: Even though those numbers did come in a little bit stronger for President Trump then you had anticipated?

STIREWALT: The way this works, you're going to get a little here and you're going to get a little there, and you're going to see the needle moved inside of the bandwidth. But this is still within the expected range. We are careful about making calls because -- we act with confidence when we make a call because we are careful, because there's a bandwidth. And whether it's at the high-end or the low end of the bandwidth, that's why we have those protocols in place so that we make good calls and that they stand up.

BAIER: Chris, thank you.

Let's bring in our panel, Bill Bennett, former Education Secretary, host of "The Bill Bennett Show" podcast, Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for National Public Radio, and Bill McGurn, columnist for "The Wall Street Journal." Bill Bennett, let me start with you. Your thoughts as we wait on the president here about where we are and where we may be going?

BILL BENNETT, FORMER EDUCATION SECRETARY: Big picture, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I tend not to be hysterical. I follow the philosopher's oath. That's my profession, tell the truth. But just a few facts, you look at Philadelphia and after they stopped counting on Tuesday night, one tranche of votes was delivered, 23,277, all for Joe Biden. All for Joe Biden? Doesn't that raise a question? And this was, by the way, according to Nate Silver at 538.

In Milwaukee, they had 89 percent turnout in the city of Milwaukee, which was 20, 30 points higher than Hillary Clinton had, and 10 points or 15 points higher than Barack Obama. What does that mean? It's circumstantial evidence for sure, but it seems to me to suggest that the inquiry needs to be pushed. Courts can look at circumstantial evidence and make inferences from it -- 23,277 votes in one tranche according to FiveThirtyEight, all for Joe Biden? I think any reasonable person would say, what the heck is going on?

MACCALLUM: Good questions. Bill McGurn, your thoughts on this?

BILL MCGURN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I have the same thing. I'm not a poll watcher. I don't know if there is fraud. I hear anecdotal evidence and so forth. I haven't seen it. But I do think things with concern. It seems to me that the key value should be transparency. So when the city of Philadelphia defies a court order to keep Republican poll watchers out, if that's indeed what they did, that should be very concerning to us.

I think the larger picture of this is you look at all the changes we've made in election law -- and the other part of Pennsylvania, frankly, that I find outrageous is the Supreme Court let stand a state court ruling that I think is unconstitutional. The law was one thing by the elected representatives, that's where the Constitution puts it, and they basically extended a deadline on their own.

But these individual things add up, and I think what it's going to do is no matter who wins or loses, the loser will probably not only think I've lost the election, but it was stolen from me, and that's a terrible thing for our country. And it sort of -- the more lawyers, the more disputes, the more complicated and irregular you make the vote. I don't mean illegally irregular, but the more -- the more different kind of ways you can vote and so forth, the more you invite these kinds of outcomes. And I think it's going to be very bitter at the end, and that really worries me.

BAIER: Mara, the Democrats and a lot of these state officials are saying we had a very smooth election for the most part in these different places.

They are not seeing evidence of fraud, and they are willing to look at all of the challenges, but at least they are so far standing up. The ballots can be challenged legally, and there's a process and a recount --

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Yes, the ballots can be challenged.

BAIER: -- in Wisconsin. But so far, they are saying they're not seeing it.

LIASSON: Right, they are saying they're not seeing it. The president has an army of lawyers at his disposal, and this is what the court system is made to do. They should bring in the evidence to the courts, that there are irregularities that they say they've seen, and the evidence will be looked at.

One of the things we've seen is the strategy of the Trump campaign, the legal strategy is different in every state. Sometimes they are saying stop counting the vote, sometimes they are saying the vote should be counted.

The president tweeted today stopped counting the votes. Well, if that was the case, Joe Biden would win right now. So I think this process will play itself out, and I hope that whatever side contests the results and shows their evidence to the courts will accept the ruling of the court system.

MACCALLUM: So, Bill Bennett, in many ways we -- this is playing out as we were told it might with regard to the day-of vote, right? You had Republicans encouraging people to vote in person. You had the Biden side encouraging people to get those votes in, get them in early, get them in by mail, and then we were told that that would likely mean that when they counted the day-of vote, President Trump would get -- would be strong in the places where he was strong, and that when the cities came in, it might get a little bit more red. And it seems like so far that has played out pretty closely to what was anticipated.

BENNETT: Yes. Well, there are many anomalies here. And again, just to elaborate further on what I said, because I missed some of your question, but we are seeing this very high turnout in these inner cities like Milwaukee and Philadelphia, way out of proportion to what happened even during Obama --

BAIER: Let me just interrupt you, Bill, one second. I've had a couple of experts from Wisconsin have told me that this turnout number is based on

3.1 million registered voter, I'm talking about Milwaukee list that's old.

The real number is 3.6 million. Plus they have same-day registration where it's 10 to 15 percent of the vote, so it's higher than 3.6. So the voter turnout, these are experts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they claim turnout there is not unusual. I just want interrupt you.

There is the president of United States, we'll come back after he speaks to digest what he says. President Donald J. Trump.

TRUMP: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening.

I'd like to provide the American people with an update on our efforts to protect the integrity of our very important 2020 election.

If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late -- we're looking at them very strongly. A lot of votes came in late.

I have already decisively won many critical states, including massive victories in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, to name just a few. We won these and many other victories, despite historic election interference from big media, big money, and big tech. As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers.

And the pollsters got it knowingly wrong. They got it knowingly wrong.

We had polls that were so ridiculous, and everybody knew it at the time.

There was no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave. That was false. That was done for suppression reasons.

But, instead, there was a big red wave. And it's been properly acknowledged, actually, by the media. They were, I think, very impressed, but that was after the fact. That doesn't do us any good.

We kept the Senate, despite having twice as many seats to defend as Democrats. And in a -- really much more competitive states, we have -- we did a fantastic job with the Senate. I think we are very proud of what's happened there, and many more seats to defend.

They spent almost $200 million on Senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky alone, two races, and hundreds of millions of dollars overall against us.

At the national level, our opponent's major donors were Wall Street bankers and special interests. Our major donors were police officers, farmers, everyday citizens.

Yet, for the first time ever, we lost zero races in the House. I was talking to Kevin McCarthy today. He said he couldn't believe it, zero races, very unusual thing, zero, and actually won many new seats, with, I think, many more on the way.

This was also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to Congress than ever before. That is a great achievement. I won the largest share of nonwhite voters of any Republican in 60 years, including historic numbers of Latino, African-American, Asian American, and Native American voters, the largest ever in our history.

We grew our party by four million voters, the greatest turnout in Republican Party history.

Democrats are the party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech, it seems. And Republicans have become the party of the American worker. And that's what's happened. And we're also, I believe, the party of inclusion.

As everyone now recognizes, media polling was election interference, in the truest sense of that word, by powerful special interests. These really phony polls -- I have to call them phony polls, fake polls -- were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden, and diminish Republicans' ability to raise funds.

They were what's called suppression polls. Everyone knows that now.

And it's never been used to the extent that it's been used on this last election.

To highlight just a few examples, the day before election, Quinnipiac, which was wrong on every occasion that I know of, had Joe Biden up by five points in Florida, and they were off by 8.4 points. And I won Florida easily, easily. So, they had me losing Florida by a lot, and I ended up winning Florida by a lot. Other than that, they were very accurate.

They had him up four points in Ohio. And they were off by 12.2 points. And I also won Ohio, the great state of Ohio, very easily.

"The Washington Post" had Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin, and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 points. And they knew that.

They're not stupid people. They knew that. Suppression.

There are now only a few states yet to be decided in the presidential race.

The voting apparatus of those states are run in all cases by Democrats. We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually. And then our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret, and they wouldn't allow legally permissible observers.

We went to court in a couple of instances, and we were able to get the observers put in. And when the observers got there, they wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 80 feet, 100 feet away, or outside the building to observe people inside the building.

And we won a case, a big case. And we have others happening. There are a lot of -- lots of litigation, even beyond our litigation. There's tremendous amount of litigation generally because of how unfair this process was.

And I predicted that. I have been talking about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system. And it makes people corrupt, even if they aren't by nature, but they become corrupt.

It's too easy.

They want to find out how many votes they need, and then they seem to be able to find them. They wait and wait, and then they find them. And you see that on election night. We were ahead in vote in North Carolina by a lot, a tremendous number of votes, and we're still ahead by a lot, but not as many, because they're finding ballots all of a sudden.

Oh, we have some mail-in ballots. It's amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided too. I know that it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats. But, in all cases, they're so one-sided.

We were up by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. And that gets whittled down to, I think they said now we're up by

90,000 votes. And they will keep coming and coming and coming. They find them all over. And they don't want us to have any observers, although we won a court case. The judge said you have to have observers.

Likewise, in Georgia -- and they're appealing. Actually, they're appealing.

We won a case that we want people to watch, and we want observers. And they're actually appealing, which is sort of interesting. I wonder why they would appeal. All we want to do is have people watch as they do the vote tabulations.

Likewise, in Georgia, I won by a lot, a lot, with a lead of over getting close to 300,000 votes on election night in Georgia. And by, the way, it got whittled down. And now it's getting to be to a point where I will go from winning by a lot to perhaps being even down a little bit.

In Georgia, a pipe burst in a faraway location, totally unrelated to the location of what was happening. And they stopped counting for four hours.

And a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats.

We also had margins of 300,000 in Michigan. We were way up in Michigan, won the state. And, in Wisconsin, we did, likewise, fantastically well, and that got whittled down. Every -- in every case, they got whittled down.

Today, we're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry, I guess, 55 percent of the remaining vote, 55 percent margins. And that's a margin that we have significantly exceeded. So, we will see what happens with that, but we're on track to do OK in Arizona.

Our goal is to defend the integrity of the election. We will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election, or any election, for that matter. And we can't allow silence -- of anybody to silence our voters and manufacture results.

TRUMP: I have never had -- I have been doing a lot of public things for a long time. I have never done anything that's been as inspirational, by people calling, talking, sending things to us. I have never seen such love and such affection and such spirit as I have seen for this.

People know what's happening. And they see what's happening. And it's before their eyes. And there are many instances which will be reported very shortly. There's tremendous litigation going on. And this is a case where they're trying to steal an election. They're trying to rig an election.

And we can't let that happen. Detroit and Philadelphia, known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country, easily, cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race, a very important presidential race.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state Supreme Court to try and ban our election observers, and very strongly. Now, we won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody in there. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots.

And I can't imagine why. There's absolutely no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process, because, if it's straight, they would be -- they should be proud of it. Instead, they're trying, obviously, to commit fraud. There's no question about that.

In Philadelphia, observers have been kept far away, very far away, so far that people are using binoculars to try and see. And there's been tremendous problems caused. They put paper on all of the windows, so you can't see in.

And the people that are banned are very unhappy and become somewhat violent.

The 11th Circuit ruled that, in Georgia, the votes have been in by Election Day, that they should be in by Election Day, and they weren't. Votes are coming in after Election Day. And they had a ruling already that you have to have the votes in by Election Day.

To the best of my knowledge, votes should be in by Election Day. And they didn't do that.

Democrat officials never believed they could win this election honestly. I really believe that. That's why they did the mail-in ballots, where there's tremendous corruption and fraud going on. That's why they mailed out tens of millions of unsolicited ballots without any verification measures whatsoever.

And I have told everybody that these things would happen, because I have seen it happen. I watched a lot of different elections before they decided to go with this big, massive election, with tens of millions of ballots going out to everybody, in many cases totally unsolicited.

This was unprecedented in American history. This was by design. Despite years of claiming to care about the election security, they refused to include any requirement to verify signatures, identities or even determine whether they're eligible or ineligible to vote.

People are walking in there. They have no idea. They're just taking numbers. They're writing down things, the workers, and doing a lot of bad things. And we have a lot of information coming and litigation that you will see that will shake even you people up. And you have seen it all.

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania and other key states are all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you have written about.

And, for a long time, you have been writing about the corrupt Democrat machine.

I went to school there, and I know a lot about it. It has not changed since a long time ago. It hasn't changed. It's gotten worse.

In Pennsylvania, partisan Democrats have allowed ballots in the state to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that, and they are counting those without even postmarks or any identification whatsoever.

So, you don't have postmarks. You don't have identification. There have been a number of disturbing irregularities across the nation. Our campaign has been denied access to observe any counting in Detroit. Detroit is another place, and I wouldn't say has the best reputation for election integrity.

Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots. But, when our observers attempted to challenge the activity, those poll workers jumped in front of the volunteers to block their view, so that they couldn't see what they were doing. And it became a little bit dangerous.

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