Mitch McConnell hedges his bets and says EVERY vote must be counted - as GOP's Pennsylvania senator calls president's conspiracy-theory rant 'hard to watch' and says there is NO large scale fraud

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ignored President Donald Trump's wild claims of widespread election fraud, sending out a sober tweet Friday morning. 

'Here's how this must work in our great country: Every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes,' the Kentucky Republican wrote. 'That's how Americans' votes decide the result.'  

McConnell's comments came after a number of Republicans in and out of office have criticized Trump's Thursday evening briefing room appearance.  

His statement was markedly different in tone from that of the House's GOP leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who tweeted mid-day Friday, 'Far from over. Republicans will not back down from this battle.' 

But support for Trump was starting to crumble. 

Pennsylvania's Republican Sen. Pat Toomey gave an unprompted slap-down of Trump's election fraud claims during a Friday morning 'Today' show interview. 

'I saw the president's speech last night and it was very hard to watch,' Toomey told NBC's Savannah Guthrie. 'The president’s allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated. I’m not aware of any significant wrongdoing here.'

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted Friday morning, 'Every legal vote should be counted'

McConnell sent out a tweet Friday morning after the president made wild accusations from the White House podium Thursday night alleging widespread voter fraud - of which there's no proof 

Pennsylvania's Republican Sen. Pat Toomey was critical of Trump's remarks during TV appearances Friday morning. 'I saw the president's speech last night and it was very hard to watch,' Toomey told NBC's Savannah Guthrie 

A handful of Republicans came out quickly and condemned remarks President Donald Trump said Thursday night from the White House podium, where he alleged a conspiracy of voter fraud that is robbing him from an electoral victory, as Democrat Joe Biden is ahead 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted Friday, 'Far from over. Republicans will not back down from this battle' 

Toomey joined the slowly growing ranks of Republicans willing to speak out against the president after his spent 17 minutes rambling about a vast conspiracy against him by big tech, big donors, social media, the media in general, pollsters and Democrats. 

At least seven networks, including major broadcasters ABC, CBS and NBC, cut away from him as he spoke, saying he made 'a number of false statements'.  

Toomey explained that in Pennsylania, the state that could clinch the White House for Democrat Joe Biden as early as Friday, 'We had a massive quantity of mail-in ballots.'

'And election officials did a tremendous amount of work to be prepared to process this, but they weren't allowed to start until election day and the process is somewhat labor intensive, so it is taking a long time, it is going to take the time that it takes,' Toomey said.  

Toomey echoed his statements when he also appeared on CBS 'This Morning.' 

'The president's speech last night was very disturbing to me because he made very very serious allegations without any evidence to support it,' he said on CBS. 

GOP Sen. Mitt Romney put out a stronger critique Friday than he did on the heels of the president's remarks.   

Romney said that while Trump has the right to request recounts or have irregularities investigated - he must provide evidence.   

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney put out a stronger statement on Trump's claims Friday afternoon, calling it 'wrong' for the president to say that the election was 'rigged, corrupt and stolen' 

'He was wrong to say the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen - doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destruction and dangerous passions,' Romney said.  

Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and a Trump ally, accused the president of 'inflaming without informing' urging him to 'show us the evidence.' 

Larry Hogan, Republican governor of Maryland, said there is 'no defense' for Trump's comments, adding: 'No person is more important than democracy.' 

'There is no defense for the President's comments tonight undermining our Democratic process,' Hogan tweeted. 'America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before. No election or person is more important than our Democracy.' 

And Adam Kinzinger, a Republican representative from Illinois, added: 'If you have legit concerns about fraud present EVIDENCE and take it to court. 

'STOP Spreading debunked misinformation... This is getting insane.' 

Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey and a Trump ally, accused the President of 'inflaming without informing' after he made unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud - urging him to 'show the evidence' 

Republicans Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Gov. Larry Hogan were among the first group of Republicans to come out and criticize Trump's appearance Thursday night in the Whtie House briefing room where he spoke about widespread fraud without offering evidence

Trump appeared for 17 minutes in front of the press, reading notes out of a binder, and complained about 'suppression' polls, mail-in ballots, Democratic cities including Detroit and Philadelphia. 

He said he was the victim of a 'big media, big money and big tech' conspiracy. 

Those forces came together to commit 'historic election interference.'

Trump didn't offer any proof - nor did he take questions.   

Kinzinger was joined by two former Republican members of the U.S. Senate, Rick Santorum and Jeff Flake, in castigating Trump's remarks. 

'No Republican should be okay with the President's statements just now. Unacceptable. Period,' tweeted Flake, who's long been a Trump critic 

Santorum was on a panel on-air at CNN following Trump's speech. 

'I hope that Republicans will stand up at this moment and say to Trump what needs to be said,' Santorum said. 

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, tweeted that it's 'getting insane' for Trump to spread 'debunked misinformation,' as he put it 

Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, who's long been a Trump critic, tweeted that 'No Republican should be okay with the President's statements just now. Unacceptable. Period' 

William Cogswell, a Republican who just won a South Carolina House seat, said he was 'embarrassed and ashamed' by what Trump said 

Rep. Paul Mitchell, a Michigan Republican, said that 'our nation demands that its political leaders accept both wins and losses with grace and maturity.' 

'Every legal vote should and will be counted - as they always are. Where there are issues there are ways to address them. If anyone has proof of wrongdoing, it should be presented and resolved. Anything less harms the integrity of our elections and is dangerous for our democracy,' he also said.  

William Cogswell, who just won a seat in the South Carolina House, also slammed the president. 

'As a Republican who just won in a Blue district, I am embarrassed and ashamed by what I just heard from POTUS,' Cogswell tweeted.     

Of course, Democrats were critical too. 

'No American, regardless of political party, should be okay with the president’s statements. Unacceptable. Dangerous. Period,' wrote Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat who represents Maryland. 

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, portrayed Trump as unhinged. 

'The president needs help. Those were the rantings of a desperate, defeated man,' he tweeted. 'The most dishonest speech ever delivered from behind the presidential seal. He is trying to set our democracy on fire. Where is the "party of the Constitution" now?' 

And Rep. Katherine Clark, Massachusetts Democrat, begged other Republicans to speak out. 

'Republican colleagues, our democracy needs you,' she wrote. 'Speak up for voters and against Trump’s false attacks on the integrity of our elections. Show us that you love this country and everything we stand for.'  

Read Trump's 17-minute White House statement attacking US democracy and the 'conspiracies' against him

Thank you very much. Good evening. 

I'd like to update the American people with our efforts to protect the election. 

If you count the legal vote, 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've already won many critical states, including Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio.  

We've won -- election interference. 

As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers. And they got it knowingly wrong. It's so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time. 

There is no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave. That was false. Instead, there was a big red wave and it's been properly acknowledged by the media. 

I think they were 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 protect as Democrats. And really, and much more competitive states, we did a fantastic job with the senate. I think we're very proud of what's happened there. 

They spent more on senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky alone, two races and hundreds -- races and hundreds of millions of dollars against us. 

Opponents and major donors were wall street bankers and special interests. 

Our major donors were police officers, farmers, and everyday citizens. 

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. We won new seats, with many more on the way.

This is also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to congress than ever before. That's a great achievement. I won the largest share of non-white voters of any republican, including historic numbers of Latino, African-American, Asian American, and Native American voters, the largest ever in our history. 

We grew our party by 4 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 happened. And we're also the party of inclusion. A

s everybody 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, designed to 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. 

To highlight just a few examples, the day before the 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. 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 up by 12.2 points. And they also won Ohio, the great state of Ohio, there easily. They had Joe Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin, and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 point. And they knew that. They were not stupid people. They knew that, suppression. 

There are states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of this state 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. They wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 100 feet away, to observe. 

There is lots of litigation. There is tremendous amount of litigation because of how unfair this process was. And I predicted that. 

I talked about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system. And it's made as corrupt, even if we are not corrupt by nature. It's too easy. They wait and wait and you see that on election night.

We were ahead in North Carolina by a lot, 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.

It's amazing how these mail-in ballots are all one-sided. I know it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats. But in all cases, they are one-sided. 

We were up by 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. And that gets whittled down to, now we're up by 90,000 votes.

 They will keep coming and coming and coming and they don't want us to have observers, although we won a court case. And they're appealing. Actually, they're appealing. We won a case we want people to watch, and they're appealing. That's interesting. I wonder why they're appealing. 

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

In Georgia, a pipe burst, totally unrelated to the location, and they stopped counting and a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. 

We've had margins of 300,000. Michigan, we won the state. In Wisconsin, we did likewise, fantastically well. And that got whittled down. In every case, they got whittled down. We're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry 55% of the remaining vote, 55% margins, and that's a margin that we've significantly exceeded, so we'll see what happens with that. 

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. 

I've been doing a lot of public things for a long time. I've never had anything that's been as inspirational by people calling, talking, sending things to us. 

I've never seen such love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this. People know what happening and they've seen what's happening. 

There are many instances, which will be reported very shortly. There is tremendous litigation going on. And this is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election. We can't let that happen. 

They cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of the presidential race. 

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state supreme court to try to ban our election observers very strongly. We won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots. And I can't imagine why. There is no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process. 

Because if it's straight, they should be proud of it. Instead, they are trying obviously to commit fraud. There's no question about that. 

In Philadelphia, observers are kept far away, very far away. So far, that people are using binocular's. 

There's been tremendous problems caused, paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and have 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. 

Democrats never believed they could win this election honestly. I really believed that. 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 told everybody that these things would happen. Because I've seen it happen. 

I've 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 election security. 

They refuse to require signatures, identities, or to make sure they are eligible or ineligible to vote. People are walking in, they have no idea. They are writing down things, doing a lot of bad things.We have a lot of information coming that you'll see, will shake even you people up. 

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania, all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you've written about for a long time. You've been writing about a corrupt democrat machine. 

I went to school there. It hasn't changed. It's gotten worse. 

In Pennsylvania, partisan democrats have allowed the ballots to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that. And they are counting those without 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 the best reputation for election integrity. 

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

One major hub for counting ballots in they covered up the windows with large pieces of cardboard. So they wanted to protect and block the counting area the final batch did not arrive until 4:00 in the morning. So they brought it in. And the batches came in and nobody knew where they came from. We've been denied access. 

Counting was halted for hours and hours on election night with results with held from major democrat-run locations only to appear later and they all had the name Biden on them or just about all, which is a little strange.

I challenge Joe and Democrats to clarify that they only want legal votes. I think they should use legal votes. 

We want every legal vote counted. We want openness and transparency. No secret count rooms. No mystery ballots, no illegal votes after election day. 

You have election day and the laws are very strong on that. You have an election day. We want an honest election and an honest count. We want people working back there because it's a very important job. 

That's the way this country will win. 

We think there's going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence and so much proof, but we think there will be a lot of litigation because we can't have an election stolen like this.

I tell you, I've been talking about this for many months with all of you. 

I've said strongly that mail-in ballots are going to be a disaster, small very easy elections were disastrous. 

This is a large scale version and it's getting worse and worse every day. 

We're hearing stories that are absolute horror stories. And we can't let that happen to the united states. 

It's not a question of who wins, Republican, Democrats, Joe, myself. 

We can't let that happen to our country. 

We can't be disgraced by having something like this happen. So it will be hopefully cleared up, maybe soon. I hope soon. But it will probably go through a process, a legal process. 

As you know I've claimed certain states. He's claiming states. So we can both claim the states. 

But ultimately, I have a feeling that the judges will have to rule. 

There have been a lot of shenanigans and we can't stand for that in the country. 

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Read Trump's 17-minute White House statement attacking US democracy and the 'conspiracies' against him

Thank you very much. Good evening. 

I'd like to update the American people with our efforts to protect the election. 

If you count the legal vote, 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've already won many critical states, including Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio.  

We've won -- election interference. 

As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers. And they got it knowingly wrong. It's so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time. 

There is no blue wave that they predicted. They thought there was going to be a big blue wave. That was false. Instead, there was a big red wave and it's been properly acknowledged by the media. 

I think they were 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 protect as Democrats. And really, and much more competitive states, we did a fantastic job with the senate. I think we're very proud of what's happened there. 

They spent more on senate races in South Carolina and Kentucky alone, two races and hundreds -- races and hundreds of millions of dollars against us. 

Opponents and major donors were wall street bankers and special interests. 

Our major donors were police officers, farmers, and everyday citizens. 

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. We won new seats, with many more on the way.

This is also the year of the Republican woman. More Republican women were elected to congress than ever before. That's a great achievement. I won the largest share of non-white voters of any republican, including historic numbers of Latino, African-American, Asian American, and Native American voters, the largest ever in our history. 

We grew our party by 4 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 happened. And we're also the party of inclusion. A

s everybody 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, designed to 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. 

To highlight just a few examples, the day before the 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. 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 up by 12.2 points. And they also won Ohio, the great state of Ohio, there easily. They had Joe Biden up 17 points in Wisconsin, and it was basically even. They were off by about 17 point. And they knew that. They were not stupid people. They knew that, suppression. 

There are states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of this state 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. They wanted them 60, 70 feet away, 100 feet away, to observe. 

There is lots of litigation. There is tremendous amount of litigation because of how unfair this process was. And I predicted that. 

I talked about mail-in voting for a long time. It's really destroyed our system. It's a corrupt system. And it's made as corrupt, even if we are not corrupt by nature. It's too easy. They wait and wait and you see that on election night.

We were ahead in North Carolina by a lot, 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.

It's amazing how these mail-in ballots are all one-sided. I know it's supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats. But in all cases, they are one-sided. 

We were up by 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. And that gets whittled down to, now we're up by 90,000 votes.

 They will keep coming and coming and coming and they don't want us to have observers, although we won a court case. And they're appealing. Actually, they're appealing. We won a case we want people to watch, and they're appealing. That's interesting. I wonder why they're appealing. 

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

In Georgia, a pipe burst, totally unrelated to the location, and they stopped counting and a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. 

We've had margins of 300,000. Michigan, we won the state. In Wisconsin, we did likewise, fantastically well. And that got whittled down. In every case, they got whittled down. We're on track to win Arizona. We only need to carry 55% of the remaining vote, 55% margins, and that's a margin that we've significantly exceeded, so we'll see what happens with that. 

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. 

I've been doing a lot of public things for a long time. I've never had anything that's been as inspirational by people calling, talking, sending things to us. 

I've never seen such love and such affection and such spirit as I've seen for this. People know what happening and they've seen what's happening. 

There are many instances, which will be reported very shortly. There is tremendous litigation going on. And this is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to rig an election. We can't let that happen. 

They cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of the presidential race. 

In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state supreme court to try to ban our election observers very strongly. We won the case, but they're going forward. They don't want anybody watching them as they count the ballots. And I can't imagine why. There is no legitimate reason why they would not want to have people watching this process. 

Because if it's straight, they should be proud of it. Instead, they are trying obviously to commit fraud. There's no question about that. 

In Philadelphia, observers are kept far away, very far away. So far, that people are using binocular's. 

There's been tremendous problems caused, paper on all of the windows so you can't see in, and the people that are banned are very unhappy and have 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. 

Democrats never believed they could win this election honestly. I really believed that. 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 told everybody that these things would happen. Because I've seen it happen. 

I've 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 election security. 

They refuse to require signatures, identities, or to make sure they are eligible or ineligible to vote. People are walking in, they have no idea. They are writing down things, doing a lot of bad things.We have a lot of information coming that you'll see, will shake even you people up. 

The officials overseeing the counting in Pennsylvania, all part of a corrupt Democrat machine that you've written about for a long time. You've been writing about a corrupt democrat machine. 

I went to school there. It hasn't changed. It's gotten worse. 

In Pennsylvania, partisan democrats have allowed the ballots to be received three days after the election, and we think much more than that. And they are counting those without 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 the best reputation for election integrity. 

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

One major hub for counting ballots in they covered up the windows with large pieces of cardboard. So they wanted to protect and block the counting area the final batch did not arrive until 4:00 in the morning. So they brought it in. And the batches came in and nobody knew where they came from. We've been denied access. 

Counting was halted for hours and hours on election night with results with held from major democrat-run locations only to appear later and they all had the name Biden on them or just about all, which is a little strange.

I challenge Joe and Democrats to clarify that they only want legal votes. I think they should use legal votes. 

We want every legal vote counted. We want openness and transparency. No secret count rooms. No mystery ballots, no illegal votes after election day. 

You have election day and the laws are very strong on that. You have an election day. We want an honest election and an honest count. We want people working back there because it's a very important job. 

That's the way this country will win. 

We think there's going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence and so much proof, but we think there will be a lot of litigation because we can't have an election stolen like this.

I tell you, I've been talking about this for many months with all of you. 

I've said strongly that mail-in ballots are going to be a disaster, small very easy elections were disastrous. 

This is a large scale version and it's getting worse and worse every day. 

We're hearing stories that are absolute horror stories. And we can't let that happen to the united states. 

It's not a question of who wins, Republican, Democrats, Joe, myself. 

We can't let that happen to our country. 

We can't be disgraced by having something like this happen. So it will be hopefully cleared up, maybe soon. I hope soon. But it will probably go through a process, a legal process. 

As you know I've claimed certain states. He's claiming states. So we can both claim the states. 

But ultimately, I have a feeling that the judges will have to rule. 

There have been a lot of shenanigans and we can't stand for that in the country.