WASHINGTON — President Trump appeared to briefly acknowledge for the first time Sunday morning that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had defeated him in the presidential election, but quickly reversed himself less than two hours later, insisting that “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go.”
The dueling tweets came as Mr. Trump continued to lie about the conduct of the vote-counting process, falsely insisting that Mr. Biden’s victory was the result of a “Rigged” election orchestrated by the “Fake & Silent” media.
His first tweet came Sunday morning at 7:47. Referring to Mr. Biden, the president said that “he won.” That represented the first time Mr. Trump had publicly said what his advisers have been telling him for days privately: His re-election bid failed and Mr. Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
After a flurry of tweets and news reports about his “concession,” Mr. Trump insisted that he had been misunderstood.
At 9:16, he insisted falsely: “RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN!” And three minutes later, he wrote that Mr. Biden “only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”
The rapid online flip-flop made it clear that Mr. Trump is still refusing to abandon the lies about the election being rigged and stolen that he has been spreading since Election Day, inflaming anger among his supporters about his defeat.