Trump: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election”

As Joe Biden edges closer to victory, Donald Trump, as expected, is not going down without a fight.

Donald Trump has reiterated claims that the US election has been rigged against him as he loses vital ground to rival Joe Biden in the presidential race. In a speech on Thursday evening, Trump made a number of dubious claims about the counting process, once again questioning the legitimacy of mail-in voting, which he described as “corrupt”. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump said. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” One of Trump’s issues lies with the fact that votes in favour of Joe Biden have increased as the results of mail-in ballots in several states have been counted. “We were winning,” Trump said, “and our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret”. “We’re hearing stories that are horror stories,” he added. “We think there is going to be a lot of litigation because we have so much evidence and so much proof.” Trump has yet to present any of the “evidence” he claims to have of those “horror stories”, nor can he support, for example, claims that “Pennsylvania Democrats have gone to the State Supreme Court to try and ban our election observers”. Amongst some of his other dubious claims were that Republican observers were denied access to counting in Detroit in the state of Michigan and that the election apparatus in the state of Georgia “is run by Democrats”, when, in fact, it’s overseen by the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. In the aftermath of his speech, a series of clips from the speech posted on Trump’s Twitter account were flagged by Twitter as possibly being misleading about an election or other civic process. A short clip of Trump talking about his victories in certain states and a tweet flagging the news conference at which he delivered the speech were the only tweets not to be flagged on Thursday night. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324386685858287616 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324401527663058944 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324541519873847296 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324541695577436161 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324541720583905286 Early on Friday morning, Trump once again took to Twitter to decry the election process, claiming once again that he easily wins the election based on “LEGAL VOTES CAST”, that the Democrats are working to gain control of the Senate and that “Twitter is out of control”. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324612560646262785 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324613181466173440 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324613375213621248 At the time of writing, according to Associated Press, after calling the state of Arizona in his favour, Joe Biden now has 264 electoral votes of the 270 required to secure victory compared to Trump’s 214.