‘Don’t ever talk to the president that way’: Trump snaps at reporter questioning his election claims

Trump for the first time acknowledged he would leave the White House if Biden’s victory is confirmed

Stuti Mishra

Saturday 28 November 2020 05:58 GMT

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Trump snaps at reporter objecting to his false claims about the election

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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.

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

"There's no way that Biden got 80 million votes," he said, repeatedly.

In the briefing, Mr Trump again repeated his so-far unsubstantiated claims of “massive fraud” and said he is not ready to concede.

"It's going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud," Mr Trump said, adding that the US election was "like a Third-World country."

"As to whether or not we can get this apparatus moving quickly – because time isn't on our side, everything else is on our side, facts are on our side, this was a massive fraud," Mr Trump said.

He went on to say that if Mr Biden is indeed declared the winner, the electoral college will have "made a mistake, cause this election was a fraud".

When Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason tried to ask a follow up question, the president snapped and said: "Don't talk to me that way. I'm the President of the United States. Don't ever talk to the president that way."

He then moved on to the next reporter.

News networks projected Joe Biden as the winner of the election more than three weeks ago, and the president-elect has since consolidated his lead with 306 electoral college votes and the highest number of popular votes in the history of US elections. The Trump campaign nonetheless continues to claim it can win, and has filed several lawsuits in various swing states, though none have yet yielded any positive results for them.

Mr Trump has only made a handful of public appearances since and has each time refused to take questions from reporters. He has preferred to keep his messaging mainly focussed on a barrage of tweets, many of which have been flagged as misinformation by Twitter.

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