US elections: Donald Trump prematurely declares ‘we won this election’

President Donald Trump has declared victory in the US election, while numerous states remain too close to call.

The president made his way to the podium at the White House after 2 a.m. (US time) to address a supporters room. He called the election a fraud and announced that he would seek a Supreme Court ruling to stop the additional vote counting.

“I want to thank the American people for their tremendous support. Millions and millions of people voted for us today.

“A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we will not accept it,” the president said.

The reaction to the comments was swift, and Piers Morgan called it “an unprecedented assault on American democracy.”

During his often rambling speech, Trump told supporters that he was on track to secure re-election before the vote counting stopped “suddenly.”

“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything and suddenly it was canceled. We were all ready to go out and celebrate something so beautiful, so good, so successful.”

“This is a fraud to the American public. It is an embarrassment to our country. We were preparing to win this election. Frankly, we won this election. So our goal now is to ensure integrity, for the good of the nation, we want the law is used appropriately.

“So we’re going to go to the Supreme Court. We want the voting to stop. We don’t want them to find ballots at 4 in the morning and add them to the list. It’s a very sad time. For me, this is a very sad time.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already won it,” Trump said.

Trump argued that he was too far ahead in the electoral count to be defeated.

“We were winning everything and suddenly everything was canceled,” he said.

“This is a record. There’s never been anything like it. We won states that we weren’t expected to win. Florida, we won it by a lot. We won the great state of Ohio. We won Texas by 700,000 votes.

“It is also clear that we have won Georgia. We have won 117,000 votes with only 7 percent remaining. They cannot catch up with us. In the same way, we have clearly won North Carolina.”

“We are winning Pennsylvania by a huge number of votes. We have increased 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania. These are not even close.”

Trump has previously accused his rivals of trying to “steal” the election while his presidency hangs in the balance, which Twitter immediately flagged.

Before Trump’s speech, Democratic challenger Joe Biden delivered a speech to his supporters in which he revealed his confidence in winning the election.

“Keep the faith guys. We’re going to win this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have a lot of patience,” he said.