Trump lashes out as Clinton joins recount effort

  • 28/11/2016
(Getty)
(Getty)

US President-elect Donald Trump has let rip with another Twitter tirade, this time attacking Hillary Clinton for joining the effort for a vote recount in three battleground states.

Green Party nominee Jill Stein's fight got a major boost on Friday when Wisconsin officials announced they were moving forward with the first presidential recount in state history.

The incoming president had been paying little if any attention to Ms Stein's recount push, but Ms Clinton forced his hand on Saturday by formally joining the effort.

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," he tweeted on Sunday evening.

In another tweet he quoted Ms Clinton's concession speech: "'Trump is going to be our President. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.' So much time and money will be spent - same result! Sad."

After accusing the election of being "rigged" during the Presidential campaign, Mr Trump is calling the recount effort in three pivotal battleground states a "scam".

"The people have spoken and the election is over," Mr Trump declared on Saturday in his first comments about the growing effort to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He added: "We must accept this result and then look to the future."

"Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves," Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias wrote Saturday in a blog post.

"But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides."

Mr Elias said Ms Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Ms Stein were to follow through with recount requests those states, even though that was highly unlikely to change the election outcome.

Ms Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Mr Trump won 290 electoral votes to Ms Clinton's 232, with Michigan still too close to call. It takes 270 to win the presidency.

Since the vote, Mr Trump's message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

Reuters / Newshub.