US President Donald Trump has admitted for the first time that his opponent Joe Biden won the presidential election earlier this month, but continues to insist he is not conceding.
Over the course of a series of tweets earlier this afternoon, the outgoing president contradicted himself on the result of the vote and repeated a number of conspiracy theories intended to cast doubt on Biden’s victory.
Quoting a tweet about Joe Biden from a Fox News contributor, Trump wrote: “He won because the Election was Rigged.”
He continued on to claim, without evidence, that his defeat should be blamed on election technology company Dominion, which supplied software to local governments to help with the count.
He won because the Election was Rigged. NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more! https://t.co/Exb3C1mAPg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2020
In another tweet, he ominously claimed that mechanical glitches experienced on the November 3 election night were “THEM” attempting to steal votes – again without offering evidence or specifying who he was referring to.
Each of the tweets was accompanied by a cautionary note from Twitter, saying the claims of election fraud are disputed.
All states have now projected a winner, with Biden receiving 306 votes in the electoral college system.
That far surpasses the 270 mark needed to designate the winner, and exactly matches the electoral college vote count Trump achieved in the 2016 election.
However, the president has refused to admit he will be moving away from the White House in January.
In a later tweet, he wrote: “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go.”
