Trump news: President loses Pennsylvania appeal as he backtracks on vow to leave peacefully

Taking questions from reporters for the first time since the election late on Thursday, Donald Trump lashed out at a reporter who questioned his claims about voter fraud saying: “Don't ever talk to the president that way."

In a White House briefing on Thanksgiving, Mr Trump faced questions from reporters after talking to troops serving overseas. For the first time, the president acknowledged that he will leave office “if” the electoral college formalises president-elect Joe Biden's victory, writes Stuti Mishra.

"Certainly I will, and you know that," Mr Trump said when asked by a reporter about leaving the White House when Mr Biden is declared the winner on 14 December.

Donald Trump hit a few of his favourite notes in a late-evening tweetstorm on Thanksgiving. Perhaps a big roast dinner gave him extra energy.

He first claimed that news organisations had “co-ordinated” to erase the true message of his press conference, which he had used to push more false claims about the election.

Then, he accused Twitter of inventing its trending topics to make him look bad.

He signed off with a claim that Section 230, a piece of legislation that gives websites immunity in respect of third-party posts, should be scrapped because “national security” demanded it.

Donald Trump has claimed the “race is far from over”, as he finally answered questions from the media about the 2020 US election, writes Andrew Buncombe.

In a remarkable outburst that followed a video conference with members of the US military, the president claimed — again without evidence — that he had been the victim of “a rigged election”.

He also said he would be heading to Georgia as early as the weekend in order to campaign on behalf of two Republican senate candidates, in races that will determine which party controls the upper chamber of Congress.

Donald Trump is to hold a campaign event in Georgia to support Republicans in the Senate run-off elections there.

Those votes will decide which party controls the Senate when Joe Biden takes office.

The Republican incumbents are David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

One of the reasons Republicans have stood by Mr Trump and his baseless claims of fraud has been to keep his loyal base energised ahead of those runoffs on 5 January. But the president, in his Thanksgiving press conference, openly questioned whether that election would be fair.

Donald Trump’s pardon of his former national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, convicted of lying to the FBI, has understandably provoked outrage, writes Sean O’Grady.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has publicly condemned it as “an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of power”. Fair or not, Trump’s controversial act of clemency is hardly unprecedented. Over the centuries, the traditional power of pardon has benefitted the good, the bad and the ugly.

I missed this when rounding up Donald Trump’s late-evening tweets before.

His rant about Twitter trending topics was in response to the hashtag #DiaperDon, it turns out.

Twitter users joked that he was wearing a nappy while sat behind his small press conference table. Calling that a national security threat might be overstating it.

The partner of detained activist and whistleblower Julian Assange has called on Donald Trump to pardon him so that he can return home for Christmas, and see his two children.

In an appeal to the president a day after Mr Trump announced he was pardoning disgraced former national security advisor Michael Flynn, Stella Morris posted a picture of their young children.

“These are Julian’s sons Max and Gabriel. They need their father. Our family needs to be whole again,” she wrote.

Donald Trump was asked if he was using “the language of a dictator” following a brief but extraordinary press conference in which he doubled down on election misinformation, refused to say if he would attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, and angrily assailed a reporter for asking if he would concede to his Democratic rival, writes Tom Embury-Dennis.

The US president on Thursday took reporters’ questions for the first time since the 3 November vote, but he mostly failed to answer accurately as he continued to deny the fact Mr Biden won both the electoral college and the popular vote.

Donald Trump has urged the American public not to give president-elect Joe Biden credit for the development of Covid-19 vaccines, saying “the vaccines were me” in his first press conference since the election, writes Mayank Aggarwal.

Speaking to reporters after a phone call with US troops on Thanksgiving, Mr Trump said of Mr Biden: “Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before.

“We are rounding the curve. The vaccines are being delivered. It will start next week and the week after. It will hit the frontline workers, seniors, doctors and nurses. We are going very quickly,” said Mr Trump.