US President Donald Trump erupted in a tirade of unsubstantiated claims that he has been cheated out of winning the US election as vote counting across front line states early Friday showed Democrat Joe Biden steadily closing in on victory.  "They are trying to steal the election," an increasingly isolated Trump said in an extraordinary appearance at the White House on Thursday, two days after polls closed.

Giving no evidence and taking no queries afterward from reporters, Trump spent 17 minutes making the kind of fire-starting statements about the country's democratic process that have never been heard before from a US president.

As per Trump, Democrats were using "illegal votes" to "steal the election from us." He said "If you count the legal votes, I easily win," he claimed. "They're trying to rig an election. And we can't let that happen." However, Trump's rhetoric came as his campaign aggressively challenged the integrity of the huge number of ballots mailed in, rather than cast in person on Election Day.

The big shift to postal votes this year reflected the desire of voters to avoid risking exposure to Covid-19 in crowded polling stations during a pandemic that has already killed some 235,000 Americans. With Trump charging deceit, mail-in ballots have tilted heavily to Democrats. In the crucial state of Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign moved to stop the counting of votes which authorities were not allowed from processing before Election Day.

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