As Biden closes in, Trump erupts

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gained more ground on US President Donald Trump in the battleground states on Friday, edging closer to the White House hours after Trump claimed the election was being "stolen" from him.

Biden had a 253 to 214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to most major television networks, and was inching toward securing the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College in four undecided swing states.

Biden, 77, would become the next president by winning Pennsylvania, or by winning two out of the trio of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Trump's likeliest path appeared narrower－he needed to win both Pennsylvania and Georgia and also to overtake Biden in either Nevada or Arizona.

In Pennsylvania, which has 20 electoral votes, Biden cut Trump's lead to just more than 18,000 by the early hours of Friday.

Later, he overtook Trump in the number of counted ballots in Georgia, with a 1,096-vote advantage. But there is a potential that the race could go to a recount. Under Georgia law, if the margin between Biden and Trump is under half a percentage point of difference, a recount can be requested.

Biden, meanwhile, saw his lead in Arizona shrink to around 47,000 by early on Friday. He was still ahead in Nevada by only 12,000 votes.

As the country held its breath three days after Tuesday's election day, Georgia and Pennsylvania officials expressed optimism they would finish counting on Friday, while Arizona and Nevada were still expected to take days to finalize their vote totals.

Trump, 74, has sought to portray as fraudulent the slow counting of mailin ballots, which surged in popularity due to fears of exposure to the coronavirus through in-person voting.

Trump fired off several tweets in the early morning hours on Friday, reiterating the complaints he aired earlier at the White House.

"I easily win the presidency of the United States with legal votes cast," he said on Twitter, without offering any evidence.

But Twitter later flagged the post as possibly misleading.

In an assault on the process, Trump appeared in the White House on Thursday evening and alleged the election was being "stolen" from him.

Providing no evidence and taking no questions from reporters, Trump spent nearly 17 minutes making the kind of incendiary statements about the country's democratic process that have never been heard before from a US president.

'One-man show'

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Friday urged both sides in the election to show restraint until the results were available, adding it was irresponsible to aggravate tensions.

"America is more than a one-man show. Anyone who continues to pour oil on the fire in a situation like this is acting irresponsibly," Maas told Germany's Funke media in unusually blunt language.

Backers of Trump ramped up demonstrations on Thursday night against the election they believe was rigged or being stolen, in some cases bringing guns or clashing with counterprotesters as they rallied in battleground states.

Protests have been scattered, small and largely peaceful since Tuesday.

If Biden did win Georgia, he would be the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992.

The close election underscored the nation's deep political divides, while the slow count of millions of mail-in ballots served as a reminder of the coronavirus still sweeping the country.

The winner will face a pandemic that has killed more than 234,000 people in the US and left millions more out of work, even as the country still grapples with the aftermath of months of unrest over race relations and police brutality.

Agencies via Xinhua, Belinda Robinson and Ai Heping in New York contributed to this story.