(CNN)President Donald Trump for the first time Sunday morning acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden’s victory while falsely blaming his loss on a string of baseless conspiracy theories.
Trump tweeted, “He won because the Election was Rigged,” before continuing to blame his loss on debunked theories about the election.
In a follow-up tweet shortly after, Trump stood by his false belief he may be able to win the election and refused to concede. “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go,” Trump tweeted.
The tweets from Trump followed a Saturday spent golfing and tweeting similar false conspiracy theories, and driving by a crowd of his supporters who gathered in Washington to protest the election results on the basis of his lies and propaganda.
Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that his chance at a second term in office was stolen from him with corrupt votes. A previous fact check by CNN of claims by a handful of prominent Republicans, including members of Trump’s family and supporters like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, of dead people voting in Michigan fell apart under scrutiny. A CNN analysis of the claim and the purported backing for it did not find a single instance of that happening.
Incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Sunday that Trump’s tweet that Biden won is “further confirmation of the reality” that the former vice president won the election, but added that the President’s Twitter feed doesn’t determine an election.
“Well, like I accept it as a further confirmation of the reality that Joe Biden won the election — and not through any of the rest of that tweet, not through fraud or anything else the President is baselessly alleging. He won because he got more votes, OK, that’s why he won,” Klain said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “He got more votes in the popular vote by a lot, and he won the same number of electoral votes that President Trump himself called a landslide four years ago. But look, if the President is prepared to begin to recognize that reality, that’s positive. Donald Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden president or not president. The American people did that.”
Biden reached more than 270 electoral votes after his win in Pennsylvania. The Democrat now has 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 as a result of wins in two longtime Republican states, Arizona and Georgia, CNN projects — far above the 270 threshold that Biden needed to clinch the presidency.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
CNN’s Chandelis Duster, Sarah Mucha and Pamela Brown contributed to this report.
