A FURIOUS Donald Trump blasted a reporter as a “lightweight” for asking when he would concede to Joe Biden during a tense Thanksgiving briefing.
Trump slammed a Reuters White House correspondent for asking when he planned to vacate the Oval Office and pushing back on his “rigged” election claims on Thursday.
“Don’t talk to me that way,” Trump raged when Jeff Mason interrupted his rant about the Electoral College vote. ″You’re just a lightweight.”
“Don’t talk to me that way,” he continued. “I’m the president of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the president that way.”
His comments came after Mason asked when he planned to do when Biden was certified the election winner on December 14.
“Well if they do, they [the Electoral College] made a mistake, because this election was a fraud,” Trump began before Mason cut across him and was swiftly reprimanded by the enraged president.
During the lengthy conference, Trump initially said he would concede peacefully before reiterating that he “won” the election hours later on Twitter.
“It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud,” Trump said.
But he added that he would leave office to ensure a peaceful transition of power, adding: “Certainly I will. And you know that.”
It is the first time Trump has said publicly he is open to stepping down as president since the election after spending Thanksgiving morning on his Virginia golf course.
However, he later hit out at reports after his news conference, saying the “real message” was missed and reiterating his “rigged” election claims in a labeled tweet.
He tweeted: “[I] realized once again that the Fake News Media coordinates so that the real message of such a conference never gets out. Primary point made was that the 2020 Election was RIGGED, and that I WON!”
Earlier, he had declined to say whether he would attend Biden’s inauguration, claiming “this election was a fraud.”
Trump said: “I don’t want to say that yet I mean I know the answer, I’ll be honest, I know the answer, but I just don’t want to say it yet.
“We’re like a third world country. We have machines that nobody knows what the hell they’re looking at. I mean you take a look at all the mistakes they made.
“This election was a fraud, just so you understand this election was a fraud.”
“If you look, just take a look anywhere on the internet. You will see many, many people where they’re experimenting with this stupid machinery. Wherever you send it a certain way the votes go from Trump to Biden.”
Biden won the election by more than 80million votes to Trump’s 73million with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
This is close to the same margin that Trump beat Hillary Clinton by in 2016 with 304 electoral votes to 227 but the outgoing president continues to decry the results.