Washington: “If you count the legal votes I easily win,” Trump said in an appearance in the White House briefing room, complaining that ballots still being counted suggest to him that the election is being rigged and stolen from him.
The U.S. presidency hinged on a dwindling set of uncounted votes in a handful of battleground states on Thursday, as Democrat Joe Biden inched closer to winning the White House while President Donald Trump escalated his unprecedented efforts to cast doubt on the election’s integrity.
Numerous US TV networks therefore halted the live coverage of Donald Trump as they concluded that he was spreading false information.
Biden, the former vice president, was chipping away at the Republican incumbent’s leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia even as he maintained narrow advantages in Nevada and Arizona, moving closer to securing the 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College that determines the winner.
In three of the four states, the margins between the two men had tightened since Wednesday, as results from counting centers trickled in and anxious Americans waited for clarity after an exhausting and deeply vitriolic election.
In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lead had shrunk from 319,000 on Wednesday afternoon to 107,000 a day later, while his margin in Georgia fell from 68,000 to fewer than 10,000. Those numbers were expected to continue to move in Biden’s favor, with many of the outstanding ballots from areas that typically vote Democratic, including the cities of Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Biden, meanwhile, saw his lead in Arizona contract from 93,000 to 68,000; he was ahead in Nevada by only 11,000 votes.
