Trump insists ‘I concede NOTHING’ after apparently admitting Biden won US election

‘He won,’ the president tweeted, before walking the comment back an hour and a half later

Donald Trump plays golf at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia after appearing to have briefly accepted the result of the 2020 election (REUTERS)

Donald Trump appeared to briefly accept the results of the US election after writing on Twitter that president-elect Joe Biden had won the vote a week and a half prior.

Mr Trump, who disputes the result of the poll that saw the former vice president win both the popular vote and the electoral college by significant margins, but lacks any evidence for his arguments, used Mr Biden’s victory as part of an attack on the democratic process.

“He won because the Election was Rigged” he wrote on Twitter at 7.47 am on Sunday.

“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!” he added.

The claims about vote watchers have been debunked, with Mr Trump’s own legal team arguing on election day only that observers should be moved closer to the people counting ballots.

Allegations about Dominion voting systems switching votes away from Mr Trump have also been challenged by his own government, with a statement from the Department of Homeland Security saying: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

However, for many the focus remained on the first two words of Mr Trump’s tweet – the first time the 45th president had, in any form, acknowledged that his opponent had won the vote. “He won” was among the day’s top trending phrases on Twitter.

Mr Trump rowed back an hour and 32 minutes later. “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA.” he wrote. “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

The tweet and subsequent reversal was reminiscent of comments from the president on the day following the election, when he demanded through Twitter that the nation “STOP THE COUNT” at a time when doing so would have lost him the election. Three hours later, at the apparent urging of aides, he changed tack to tweet “STOP THE FRAUD”.

The about-face came as Mr Trump’s predecessor warned that he was damaging the country by refusing to concede. Barack Obama told CBS News: "Any of us who attain an elected office, whether it's dogcatcher or president, are servants of the people. It's a temporary job. We're not above the rules, we're not above the law, that's the essence of our democracy.

 

"I think we were in a circumstance in this election in which certain norms, certain institutional values, that are so extraordinarily important, had been breached. That it was important for me, as somebody who had served in that office, to simply let people know 'This is not normal.'"