Trump admits for first time that Biden won the election

President Donald Trump finally admitted to losing the election — before immediately continuing to spread misinformation about false allegations of mass voter fraud, and later claiming President-elect Joe Biden “only won in the eyes of the Fake News Media”.

After days of refusing to concede, the president wrote in a tweet on Sunday morning: “He won because the Election was Rigged.”

Mr Trump falsely claimed in all-caps there were “NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS” allowed in the polling places, which is simply not true and can be easily disputed by the witness statements and video evidence of polling place observers watching the ballot count all across the country.

The president has continued to post statements on social media that were false and even flagged by platforms like Twitter and Facebook for containing misleading information about the election.

Before Sunday, the president repeatedly refused to accept the fact he lost the election, even as a wave of legal challenges he filed against the electoral process were notably failing in key states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, as the law firms representing his campaign unexpectedly pulled out of their respective cases. 

The president almost admitted to his defeat on Friday at the White House at a press conference surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

Discussing the election, Mr Trump again claimed the vote was “rigged” while failing to provide any evidence. He also said his administration would not enforce lockdown measures to combat the novel virus that has killed nearly 250,000 Americans, saying: “Ideally we won’t go to a lockdown. I will not go. This administration will not be going to a lockdown.”

“Hopefully, the, the whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell,” he said, adding: “But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”

It seemed he was finally ready to say he lost just a few days later, though he continued to claim that loss was the result of a rigged system — something his own Department of Homeland Security rejected when it said the 2020 election was “the most secure” in American history.

In a follow-up tweet, Mr Trump alleged Democrats “succeeded plenty” due to voter fraud while adding: “Mail-in elections are a sick joke!”

However, a vast pool of research and analysis has shown mail-in voting to be a safe and effective way to cast ballots in an election without fear of rigging or cheating.

Virtually all of the president’s claims about voter fraud have been consistently debunked: his campaign falsely said dead voters cast ballots when in fact they did not; it also falsely said military families were casting illegal ballots when in fact they were not; and it also falsely said that Mr Trump could only lose the election if there was mass voter fraud. None of this is true. 

Of course, the president then changed his tone just an hour later, saying he refused to concede and there was still a “long way” to go.

“RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!” Mr Trump wrote in all-caps. He then posted another tweet that read: “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

There is no still no credible evidence to support any of the president’s claims surrounding mass voter fraud.