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Prominent Republicans and conservative commentators have joined the condemnation of President Donald Trump's baseless claim that he had won reelection.

Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning gave a short speech at the White House in which he said "frankly, we did win this election."

No winner was clear when he made the remarks, however, and millions of votes were yet to be counted.

Trump described the fact that not all votes had been counted on election night a normal aspect of US elections as a "major fraud on our nation" and repeated without evidence his claim that mail-in voting had led to voter fraud.

The claim was not unexpected; a report last week by Axios indicated that Trump was planning to declare victory on election night if it appeared that he was "ahead" in early results.

Numerous prominent Republican figures lined up to condemn Trump early Wednesday morning.

"I was very distressed by what I heard the president say," former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said.

"The president is prone as we know to bluster and fits of pique and being upset about how he's being treated," he told CNN. "I don't have any problem ... I think Joe Biden said similar things, 'I think I won,' and that's fine. You think you won, that's great.

"But the idea of using the word fraud, and fraud is being committed by people counting votes, is wrong."

He added: "I understand the president's frustration because some of the states weren't called as early as he'd like, but at the same time he complained about one of those states being called, Arizona. I understand that the president feels like it's a grievance against him and somehow or another this is another example of the media not treating him fairly, and I'll just say that I could not disagree more in this case."

He was echoed by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, who told ABC News that speaking "not as a former governor but a former US attorney" there was "just no basis to make that argument tonight."

He said: "All these votes have to be counted that are in now. In Pennsylvania, the counting won't even start until tomorrow or Thursday or Friday because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended for three days when you can accept ballots. I understand that there could be an argument on that based on Pennsylvania law, but that argument is for later. Tonight was not the time to make this argument."

Asked whether Trump's premature claim of victory was a political move, Christie said: "It is, but it's got to be bigger than that."

He added: "I think that by prematurely doing this, if there is a flaw in it later, he has undercut his own credibility calling attention to that flaw.

"I think it's a bad strategic decision, it's a bad political decision, and it's not the kind of decision you'd expect someone to make tonight who holds the position he holds."

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida became the first sitting Republican senator to appear to publicly criticize Trump's statement later Wednesday, tweeting: "The result of the presidential race will be known after every legally cast vote has been counted."

John Bolton, the former national security advisor to Trump, said the president's comments "were some of the most irresponsible comments that a president of the United States has ever made."

He told Sky News: "He has cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process purely for his own political advantage. It's a disgrace."

The Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg told CNN that "for a president to say we're going to disenfranchise legally cast ballots is really extraordinary," adding, "It's a distressing moment for me as a longtime Republican."

The Fox News host Chris Wallace said Trump's separate reference of plans to go to the Supreme Court, the basis of which is unclear, was "extremely inflammatory, and frankly I don't think it's something that the courts would allow."

He said: "This is an extremely flammable situation, and the president just threw a match into it.

"He hasn't won these states. Nobody is saying he has won these states. The states haven't said that he's won.

"This goes right back to what Joe Biden said which is the president doesn't get to say that he's won states the American people get to say it, the state officials get to declare it."

The right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted that Trump's victory claim was "deeply irresponsible."

The contest was too close to call at the time of writing, with Joe Biden projected to win 227 Electoral College votes and Trump projected to win 213. The outcome was expected to hinge on results in the key battleground states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Joe Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, on Wednesday morning described the president's statement as "outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect" and a "naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens."

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Republicans have condemned Trump's false claim to have already won the election - Business Insider - Business Insider