DONALD Trump was still refusing to admit defeat yesterday, insisting, without any evidence, that the election had been illegitimate.

As Joe Biden started working on his transition, the President took to Twitter to suggest that the “best pollster in Britain wrote this morning that this clearly was a stolen election.”

Though not entirely clear, it seems the President was referring to a column in the Sunday Express by Patrick Basham, the director of London and Washington-based think tank the Democracy Institute.

Basham claimed there was “a mountain of evidence, direct and circumstantial, of widespread ballot fraud.” There isn’t.

Yesterday, Democrats were urging Republicans to “step up” and help “preserve the integrity of this democracy”. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, a Democrat whose support was crucial to Biden in the primary, told CNN. “We had better get a hold of ourselves and this country and stop catering to the whims of one person. So it doesn’t matter to me whether or not he concedes — what matters to me is whether or not the Republican Party will step up and help us preserve the integrity of this democracy.”

Republican senator Mitt Romney of Utah said on CNN that he expected the president to eventually “accept the inevitable”.

“You’re not going to change the nature of President Trump in these last days, apparently, of his presidency,” Romney said. “He is who he is, and he has a relatively relaxed relationship with the truth, and so he’s going to keep on fighting until the very end.”

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George W Bush, the last Republican president to win two terms, released a statement last night following a conversation with Biden.

He said: “Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country. The president-elect reiterated that while he ran as a Democrat, he will govern for all Americans. I offered him the same thing I offered Presidents Trump and Obama: my prayers for his success, and my pledge to help in any way I can.”

Bush also congratulated Trump and his supporters on “a hard-fought campaign” and added that Trump voters’ “voices will continue to be heard through elected Republicans at every level of government”.

While Bush said Trump had the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, he added the American “people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear”.

There were rumours yesterday that the president’s son-in-law, and close adviser, Jared Kushner had urged Trump to concede.

Though that was quickly quashed with a White House official telling the New York Times that Kushner was telling him to pursue “legal remedies” instead.

Over the weekend Biden signalled that his four main priorities would be Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.

One of the first things he will do is send a letter to the United Nations indicating that the US will rejoin the Paris climate accord with more than 174 countries.

He will also begin calling foreign leaders in an attempt to restore trust among the United States’ closest allies.

Internally, he’s set to take a much more hands on approach to the pandemic.

Aides said he will require masks on all federal property and on “all interstate transportation”.

Biden has named a former surgeon general, Dr Vivek Murthy, and a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, David Kessler, as co-chairs of a coronavirus working group set to get started, with other members expected to be announced today.

In a speech on Saturday night, the president-elect promised to govern for all Americans, including those who backed Trump.

“I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but to unify,” he said. “Let this grim era of demonisation in America begin to end – here and now,” he added.

“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again.

“To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy.

“We are not enemies. We are Americans.”