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Joe Biden is hours from victory after he overtakes Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Georgia - where a RECOUNT is called - but President says the election is 'not over' after incredible rant claiming conspiracy against him

  Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania with 5,5870 votes and is now poised for White House victory, leading in four of the remaining...

 Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania with 5,5870 votes and is now poised for White House victory, leading in four of the remaining swing states, despite Trump's refusal to accept defeat and claiming he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy.   

Biden leads 49.4% to Trump's 49.3% in Pennsylvania, snatching back the lead from the President with just over 160,000 votes left to count. 

The remaining votes in Pennsylvania, the largest prize in the electoral college with 20 votes, are in the Biden strongholds Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

There are around 60,000 mail-in ballots left to count in Philadelphia - where Biden leads with an enormous 82% of the vote - and 36,000 to count in Pittsburgh - where he leads 58.74% to Trump's 39.73%.  

It is still too early for officials to call the entire state for a for Biden, with so many votes outstanding. 

NBC's decision desk is projecting that he will win it today but after days of delayed counts and flip-flop results across the country, most are erring on the side of caution.

The votes in Pennsylvania are being counted quickly, unlike in Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, the remaining states in play. 

Georgia's Secretary of State said on Friday that no matter what happens, a recount will be required because the margin is so small. There are still 5,500 votes outstanding in Georgia. Of the 5million that have already been counted, Trump and Biden are neck-and-neck with 49.4% of the vote each.  Biden has a tiny lead of just 1,500 votes.  

It does not delay the election result if Biden wins Pennsylvania, or Nevada and Arizona, where he also holds leads. 

Biden is also leading in all three of those states but if he takes Pennsylvania first, he no longer needs any of them to claim an overall victory.  

Here is how the other remaining states break down;  

  • In Georgia, Biden leads by 1,500 with some 8,000 votes left to count and another 8,000 possible mail-ins from overseas military. It is worth 16 electoral college points
  • In Arizona, Biden leads by 47,000 votes with another 200,000 to count
  • In Nevada, Biden leads by 11,438 with some 50,000 left to count
  • North Carolina still has not been called. It is likely to go to Trump but makes no difference to the breakdown of electoral college seats if Trump loses Pennsylvania or any of the other states

Trump is refusing to accept what now seems like an inevitable defeat. On Thursday night, he launched an astonishing, 17-minute tirade from the White House briefing room where he claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy by big tech, big money, the Democrats and the media. 

He has vowed not to accept the final results, and his own children are telling the country to 'fight to the death' not to accept them either. 

In a statement on Friday morning, his campaign team said the election was 'far from over'. They said it was a 'false projection' that Biden would win.  

'This election is no over. The false projection of Joe Biden as the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final. 

'Georgia is headed for a recount, where we are confident we will find ballots improperly harvested, and where President Trump will ultimately prevail. 

'There were many irregularities in Pennsylvania, including having election officials prevent our volunteer legal observers from having meaningful access to vote counting locations.

'We prevailed in court on our challenge but were deprived of valuable time and denied the transparency we are entitled to under state law. 

'In Nevada, there appear to be thousands of individuals who improperly cast mail ballots. 

'Finally, the President is on course to win Arizona outright, despite the irresponsible and erroneous "calling" of the state for Biden by Fox News and the Associated Press. 

'Biden is relying on these states  for his phony claim on the White House, but once the election is final, President Trump will be re-elected,' Matt Morgan, his campaign general counsel, said. 

His reluctance to accept the result poses an unprecedented scenario for the country and the world. It will make Biden's transition to power, should he be win enough electoral college votes, more difficult.

Many networks on Thursday night refused to air Trump's speech. 

ABC, CBS and NBC  cut away from the press conference before it finished, warning their viewers that Trump had made 'a number of false statements' that needed clarifying. MSNBC was the first to cut away, as anchor Brian Williams warned 'here we go again'. Fox News and CNN covered it in full.

In a series of tweets sent at 2.30am, Trump continued his tirade - attacking social media regulation, making baseless claims of fraud, casting doubt over several close Senate races, and calling on the Supreme Court to intervene. 

Joe Biden remained narrow favorite to win the presidency on Friday, with results in a number of key swing states expected before the end of the day.

Having narrowly won the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan, he has more routes to the White House open to him - with Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina yet to be called. 

A win in Pennsylvania would hand him the presidency even if all the other states go to Trump. Holding his lead in Arizona and Nevada would also hand him the win.

Meanwhile Trump needs most of the outstanding states to go his way to stand a chance of winning.

Biden also gave a speech Thursday, calling for calm and patience while the votes are counted, insisting once again that when the dust has settled he will have beaten Trump.

'Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well,' the former vice president said from the stage of Wilmington's Queen theater late Thursday afternoon.

'So I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed and we'll know very soon.'

He also tweeted: 'No one is going to take our democracy away from us. 

'Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen. Keep the faith, folks.' 

Meanwhile Donald Trump Jr gave a speech in Georgia, where Trump's lead is now just a few hundred votes, calling for his father to 'fight to the death' and urging him to 'go to war' to 'expose all of the fraud that has been going on for far too long.'

'Americans need to know that this is not a banana republic and right now very few people have faith that's not the case,' he added. 

At the podium in the briefing room on Thursday night, President Trump read from from a script and listed his grievances at Biden's campaign, 'suppression polls' and 'fraud.'  

He left without taking a question as CNN's White House reporter Jim Acosta shouted: 'Are you a sore loser?' - then his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had to scuttle back to the podium because he had forgotten to take his notes with him.

Trump's condemnation of the entire democratic system and his growing list of enemies was switched off rapidly by TV network after TV network.

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams said as they turned away less than a minute in: 'Here we go again.'

CNN was among the few channels to air the president's full speech, after which Anderson Cooper said Trump was 'like an obese turtle flailing in the sun.'

'That is the President of the United States. 

'That is the most powerful person in the world and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun realizing his time is over,' Cooper said on air. 

'But he just hasn't accepted it and he wants to take everybody down with him, including this country.' 

Republicans also turned on him within minutes with Larry Hogan, the Maryland governor, saying: 'There is no defense. No person or election is more important than our democracy.' GOP rep Adam Klinzinger called it 'insane.'

At the briefing room podium - where the only aide with him was White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnanany - Trump appeared downcast as he listed his enemies and claimed a victory which nobody has handed to him.

'If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,' he said during what he called a press conference.


End of the show: As Trump spoke from the WHite House podium TV network after TV network turned off his conspiracy-theory laden tirade

End of the show: As Trump spoke from the WHite House podium TV network after TV network turned off his conspiracy-theory laden tirade 

Forgotten and almost lost: Trump left his prepared script, in giant text and scrawled on with sharpie at the podium and it had to be retrieved by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany

Forgotten and almost lost: Trump left his prepared script, in giant text and scrawled on with sharpie at the podium and it had to be retrieved by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany

One page of Trump's notebook contained talking points on Georgia (left), which he is now poised to lose, and the other appeared to contain unsubstantiated claims of illegal voting (right)

One page of Trump's notebook contained talking points on Georgia (left), which he is now poised to lose, and the other appeared to contain unsubstantiated claims of illegal voting (right)

Joe Biden tweeted a rebuke shortly after he finished saying: 'No one is going to take our democracy away from us. 

'Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen.'

Trump, whose campaign has launched lawsuits in several battleground states, spoke more about the polls than he did about his own campaign, calling them 'phony' and 'suppression polls,' claiming that errors by pollsters were a deliberate attempt to keep his supporters at home.

Then he turned on his own party saying that because of him was no 'blue wave,'  referring to Democrats' failure to win the Senate and add to their majority in the House.

That was a coded attack on Republicans' most senior figures who have refused to come out in support of his claims of fraud. His son Don Jr. railed against Republicans earlier in similar terms - but Mitch McConnell has said that every vote must be counted.

'We won by historic numbers. And the pollsters got it knowingly wrong, they got it knowingly wrong. We had polls that were so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time. There was no blue wave that they predicted,' Trump said. 

Trump's lead in Pennsylvania is slipping and in Georgia too Biden is creeping up on him, while Biden remains ahead in Nevada and Arizona. Biden needs only Pennsylvania to win, taking him to 273 electoral college votes, or Nevada and Arizona, taking him to 270. In contrast Trump would need to secure North Carolina, Arizona and Pennsylvania to secure 271.  

Trump had not been seen for more than 36 hours after appearing in the White House East Room at 2.30am on Wednesday morning in front of cheering fans in MAGA hats to claim then that he had 'won.'

But he spoke after a measured Biden asked Americans to be patient and calm as they waited for the final ballots in the presidential race to be counted - amid mounting anxiety over the long wait for results, and concern about public order.

'Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well,' the former vice president said from the stage of Wilmington's Queen theater late Thursday afternoon.

'So I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed and we'll know very soon.'

In the same brief statement, the Democratic nominee assured supporters that he and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, would come out on top.

In contrast Trump spent the his press conference railing. 'We grew our party by 4 million voters, the greatest turnout in Republican party history. Democrats are the party of the big donors, the big media, the big tech, it seems and Republicans have become the party of the American worker and that's what's happened,' Trump said.He accused the media of giving Biden strong poll numbers as a way of keeping his voters at home.

'As everyone now recognizes media polling was election interference in the truest sense of that word.

'By powerful special interests, these really phony polls, I have to call them phony polls, state polls, were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republicans abilities to raise funds.

Damning verdict:  Republicans are lining up to distance themselves from Trump

Damning verdict:  Republicans are lining up to distance themselves from Trump 

'They were what's called suppression polls, everyone knows that now. And it's never been used to the extent that it's been used on this last election,' he said.

He went on to accuse Democrats of tinkering with the election in states with outstanding results.

'There are now only a few states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus of those states are run in all cases by Democrats,' he said.

In fact Arizona and Georgia – two critical states that are still counting ballots – have Republican governors; Nevada's secretary of state is a Democrat and Pennsylvania's rules on counting were set by its Republican legislature.

He pointed to his campaign's lawsuits, which have alleged voter fraud but offered no proof of the allegations. Two were thrown out by judges Thursday, one claiming fraud for lack of any evidence.

'There's tremendous litigation going on and this is a case where they're trying to steal an election. They're trying to rig an election and we can't let that happen,' he said. 

PENNSYLVANIA: Supporters of U.S. president Donald Trump hold signs and chant slogans during a protest outside the Philadelphia Convention center

PENNSYLVANIA: Supporters of U.S. president Donald Trump hold signs and chant slogans during a protest outside the Philadelphia Convention center

Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators face police during a protest at Union Square in New York, New York, USA last night

Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators face police during a protest at Union Square in New York, New York, USA last night 

NEW YORK: Ten people were arrested during demonstrations in Manhattan on Friday as Americans demanded that votes be counted

NEW YORK: Ten people were arrested during demonstrations in Manhattan on Friday as Americans demanded that votes be counted

People demonstrate outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol to urge that all votes be counted

People demonstrate outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol to urge that all votes be counted

Donald Trump supporters get into an altercation with a driver that stopped to voice his support of Joe Biden during a protest about the Nevada vote outside Clark County Election Department

Donald Trump supporters get into an altercation with a driver that stopped to voice his support of Joe Biden during a protest about the Nevada vote outside Clark County Election Department

Trump supporters gather in Miami, Florida, to protest what they have deemed as election fraud from the Biden camp

Trump supporters gather in Miami, Florida, to protest what they have deemed as election fraud from the Biden camp

The blizzard of litigation he promised had been beset throughout the day by problems.


In Georgia, superior court judge James Bass said there was 'no evidence' to the Trump suit's claims that a 53 ballots arrived late and got mixed with other ballots. In Michigan, Judge Cynthia Stephens ruled against the Trump campaign's push to stop the count in order to gain additional access for its observers. 'I have no basis to find that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits,' she said.  

In Nevada, he sent Ric Grenell, his former acting director of national intelligence to announce legal claims that out of state residents had been voting.

But the press conference went badly wrong when Grenell refused to say what his name was and was laughed at by reporters then chased into a van refusing to answer questions on what evidence he had.

In Pennsylvania, the campaign claimed they were 'banned' from watching poll counters in Philadelphia and are now suing in federal court. 

And Jared Kushner was reported to be looking for a 'James Baker' figure to lead the litigation - hardly a vote of confidence in Rudy Giuliani who had been its public face for the last 48 hours.

Don Jr. headed to Georgia after tweeting a demand for 'total war,' and retweeting an appeal from a Trump supporter for a mass protest in Detroit against the count. Many of his tweets were flagged by Twitter.

Before he spoke Trump has responded to Biden's leads in Arizona and Nevada and his gains in Pennsylvania and Georgia on Twitter, often all in capitals. Several Tweets have been flagged by Twitter as misinformation. 

Biden did not mention Trump's name Thursday.

But he did make a comment that was clearly aimed at Trump and his campaign team's legal efforts to stall vote-counting and rhetorical efforts to call into question the legitimacy of the election.

'In America, the vote is sacred. It's how people of this nation express their will. And it is the will of the voters, no one, not anything else, that chooses the president of the United States of America,' Biden said. 'So each ballot must be counted.'

Earlier Thursday, Biden was at the Queen to participate in a COVID-19 and also an economic briefing. He also made an appearance at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware Wednesday, where he again told Americans they needed to wait – but that he would win.

The appearance in Delaware was clearly intended to cast Biden as presidential and paint a contrast to Trump.

The plea for calm also spoke to increasing concerns about public order.

In Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, Trump supporters, some of them armed have descended on counting locations.

And in New York there were arrests Wednesday after a pro-Biden 'count every vote' protest descended into violence. 

The president had launched a furious tweet demanding that the count be stopped early Thursday morning then said his campaign would sue in any state where Joe Biden had already been declared a winner. The election outcome now hinges on five states: NevadaArizonaGeorgiaNorth Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Nevada, Arizona and Georgia had expected to finish their counts Thursday but then changed expectations. 

The extraordinary focus on the counting in individual states is unprecedented.  

The wafer-thin margins in each state mean that every ballot now counts to the result. In a normal year, the states' results would have been called quickly by television networks and the Associated Press and the count gone on quietly in the background.

But this time, with unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots fueling a record turnout, the calls were not made and instead it is official counts which regularly take days or even weeks to be completed, certified and declared which have become the focus of public attention.  

Nevada's six electoral votes would put Biden exactly at 270 in the AP's count - handing him the presidency. 

Nevada released another tranche of votes Thursday that expanded Biden's lead to 12,000. 

Georgia also released additional votes counts that resulted in Trump's lead going down to about 13,500 votes. 

The state has about 50,000 absentee ballots left to be counted - along with provisional ballots, military ballots, and votes from Americans living overseas.

Trump, with 214 electoral votes, faces a much higher hurdle to 270. He would need to win all four remaining battleground states: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada. 

The Trump campaign expressed confidence the president will get a second term in the White House.

'By end of tomorrow – Friday – it will be clear that President Trump and Vice President Pence will serve another term in the White House,' campaign senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters in a press call on Thursday morning. 

The Biden campaign expressed similar confidence.

'Our data shows that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States,' Dillon said. 

As the count dragged on, Trump expressed confidence he will win the election but said his campaign will sue in the battleground states Joe Biden won, a sign his team is not confident the vote tallies will come out in his favor.

'All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud. Plenty of proof - just check out the Media. WE WILL WIN! America First!,' Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. Additionally, Trump has demanded the nation stop counting votes in the presidential election. 

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