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By Reuters 
2h ago
Jeff Mason and Steve Holland
Washington – As former Vice President Joe Biden edged closer to winning the White House, President Donald Trump took a fighting stance Thursday, making false claims to undermine a vote that was not going his way.
While Biden, a Democrat, called for calm and patience, Republican Trump, without offering proof, said that his opponents were engaging in election fraud and theft, accusations he has been making long before Election Day.
“If the legal votes count, I win easily,” Trump said during his remarks at the White House, his first public appearance since Wednesday morning. “This is a case where they are trying to steal an election. They are trying to manipulate an election and we cannot allow that to happen.”
Trump suggested that he had won states that had been called in favor of Biden and harshly criticized pre-election polls that he said were designed to suppress the vote because it favored the Democrat.
This year’s polls, similar to the 2016 election he won, predicted a much weaker electoral performance for Trump than he achieved.
The president, a former reality star who performs regularly for cameras and crowds, did not respond to questions from reporters in his first appearance since early Wednesday morning.
The president’s comments came as the election results continued to tilt toward his Democratic rival.
The White House was in a dark mood. The president’s advisers said they remained cautiously optimistic that he still had a path to re-election, although they admitted he could lose.
Trump worked from the Oval Office Thursday in what was otherwise largely an empty west wing. Much of his senior staff met at the campaign headquarters in nearby Virginia.
“He’s very engaged, he’s monitoring, talking to all the states. It doesn’t look good, but this guy wants to keep fighting,” said a Trump confidant, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He’s in a fighting mood right now. He’s not gloomy or downcast. But the road is getting harder and harder.”
The president’s campaign has launched multiple legal challenges in states where votes are still being counted.
A White House official said he was confident the legal challenge strategy would prevail, even if broadcasters call for the Biden race once the final vote is counted in states like Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Another lamented the loss of support among suburban women that helped ruin Trump’s chances in Wisconsin, while praising the president for changing the Republican Party over the next several decades by attracting more Latino and African American votes.
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