US President Donald Trump has claimed victory in three states that haven't been called officially, as well as Michigan which has been called for his Democrat challenger Joe Biden, claiming ballot irregularities.
Claiming Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, Trump said his campaign had a “big” lead in all three. “Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!” he tweeted.
Twitter immediately slapped a warning label on the president’s post, noting that “Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted.”
The second tweet, about the "large number of secretly dumped ballots" also got flagged as "disputed and might be misleading."
Media outlets entrusted by social networks to make election calls have not yet called any of those states for either candidate, aside from Michigan which was declared for Biden moments prior to Trump's announcement.
In a press conference in Philadelphia, the president's campaign claimed to have evidence of widespread irregularities concerning the counting of mail-in ballots, millions of which have been cast in this election.
Republican observers said they were not allowed to attend the counting in several Democrat urban strongholds, thanks to whose votes Biden claimed lead in Michigan and Wisconsin.
“We’re going to win this election! We’ve actually won it, it’s just a matter of counting the votes fairly,” said Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, speaking on behalf of the president's campaign in Philadelphia.
Speaking earlier on Wednesday, Biden said his campaign was "confident" they had enough votes to win the 270 electoral college votes to claim the presidency, though he stopped short of claiming victory outright.
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