Trump news - live: President posts ‘most important’ 46-minute speech filled with false voter fraud claims

A group of incoming Republican senators have been mocked for labelling themselves the “Freedom Force” as a counter-movement to the Democratic progressive led “Squad”.

Burgess Owens, who was elected in November to Utah's 4th Congressional District, spoke to Fox News about the new coalition of Republican women and minority lawmakers named the “Freedom Force” on Friday.

“We love our nation. This group will be talking against and giving a contrast to the hard left. We have the Freedom Force versus Squad,” Rep-elect Owens, a former Super Bowl champion, said.

The Independent’s Louise Hall has the story.

Republican lawmaker and Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham on Monday said it would be "good for the country" if outgoing president Donald Trump attends election winner Joe Biden's inauguration.

But he did concede that Mr Trump's attendance at the January inauguration could go some way in helping to heal America's bitterly divided political landscape.

"If Biden ends up winning, yeah I think so," said Mr Graham when asked if the defeated incumbent should show up to the ceremony.

Matt Mathers has the story.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brushed aside a middle-ground Covid proposal from a bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday looking to break the legislative stalemate over a new pandemic relief deal, saying lawmakers couldn't afford to "waste time" on "messaging games."

The Kentucky Republican then indicated he's revamping partisan GOP legislation after consulting Trump administration officials about what kind of bill would earn the outgoing president's signature.

“I think we have a sense of what that is,” Mr McConnell told reporters on Tuesday. “We’re going to send that out to all the offices and get some feedback to see how our members react,” the majority leader said.

He added: “We don’t have time for messaging games. We don’t have time for lengthy negotiations.

The Independent’s Oliver O'Connell and Griffin Connolly report.

The former Trump campaign manager, who was fired in September just months before the election after an alleged domestic dispute, says the president can still “pull it off”.

“I think the president is still clearly in a position that he might be able to pull this off and I’m not ready to call it off yet because I think it’s weird, I just think it’s so weird that things like in Pennsylvania vote keep coming in day after day after day after day,” he said in a Fox News interview.

Parscale also took his new status as not on the Trump campaign to claim credit for Trump’s 2016 win as “semi-quasi campaign manager”, throwing Kellyanne Conway under the bus in the process.

When asked if Conway wasn’t the campaign manager, Parscale said Jared Kushner was the real campaign manager.  

“Yeah I think that was her title, but I think the people running the day to day operation were Jared and I, and I think that it didn’t make sense why he would pull that team away if you’re getting close in 2020,” he said.

The first order of business for Neera Tanden, Joe Biden's nominee to lead the federal Office of Management and Budget, appears to be deleting more than a thousand tweets, some of which contain criticisms of the senators who will vote to confirm her.  

Ms Tanden is the president of the Centre for American Progress. Like many people involved in national politics, she spends a lot of time online, especially on Twitter. Also like many Americans, Ms Tanden gets into fights on social media and makes incendiary posts.  

Unlike most Americans, however, the people she often tweets about will now have a hand in determining whether or not she will join a presidential administration.  

Graig Graziosi reports.

The first shipments of the Pfizer vaccine will be delivered in two weeks, according to White House correspondent Ana Cabrera.

Citing a document from Operation Warp Speed, Cabrera is reporting they will begin delivery on 15 December.

Project Veritas has begun dropping two months of secretly recorded tapes from internal CNN news conferences with senior leadership and network president Jeff Zucker, which they claim will detail the political motivations behind their coverage of Donald Trump.

CNN Communications said they have “referred it to law enforcement” but that hasn’t stopped the first clips from dropping on Twitter, at least until their pulled by Jack Dorsey.

Barack Obama says slogans like “defund the police” alienate more people than they attract.

In an interview to air on Snapchat podcast on Wednesday, via Axios, the former president says the sweeping statements are less effective than intended  

“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done," Obama told host Peter Hamby.

"The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?"

The comments come as a civil war rages within the Democratic party over the lose of seats in the House of Representatives, which some have blamed on sloganeering statements like “defund the police”.

The Justice Department is investigating claims that money may have been funneled to the White House in return for a presidential pardon, according to newly unsealed court documents cited by CNN.

The investigation was revealed in a partially redacted court filing from the Washington DC district court made public on Tuesday, where it was revealed Chief Judge Beryl Howell reviewed an August request from prosecutors regarding the bribery investigation. 

Georgia election officials urged Donald Trump to condemn threats of violence after both high and low-ranking staff were harassed by the president’s supporters.

“It has to stop,” said Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling, who leads the implementation of the state’s voting system.

“Mr President, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Sterling pointed to a employee of a voting systems company whose family was targeted by a “noose out there with his name on it”.

He also mentioned Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family receiving “sexualized threats” at their home and through their cellphone.

“Death threats, physical threats, intimidation — it’s too much. It’s not right. They’ve lost the moral high ground to claim that it is,” Sterling said.