Incumbent United States' President, Donald Trump, for the first time ever admitted his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden won the November 3 presidential election.
Trump, despite the admission, immediately clarified he will not concede as he attributed Biden's win to unsubtantiated fraud claims.
"He won because the election was rigged," Trump tweeted on Sunday, adding, "NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a radical left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn't even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more!"
It was a significant acknowledgement from Trump, who - despite losing the Electoral College by 74 and popular vote by 5 million - has refused to accept the result.
"I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go," he clafiried.
Last week Trump became the first president since 1992 to fail to get re-elected, following projections Mr Biden had successfully flipped the key states of Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia to win the White House.
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Since then, the Republican incumbent has launched legal challenges and tried to undermine the validity of the result - but failed to produce any significant evidence of the mass ballot stuffing and voter fraud he is alleging.
His supporters also gathered for protests in Washington DC over the weekend and were met by counter-protests, resulting in 20 people being arrested and at least one reported stabbing.
World leaders and former presidents - including George W Bush - have all treated the contest as finished, and sent their messages of congratulations to Mr Biden.
Only yesterday, Mr Trump suggested he could somehow remain president, saying "time will tell" who will be in the White House come January.
But the 2020 election was judged to be the "most secure in American history", according ta the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which spearheaded federal election protection efforts.
It remains to be seen if Mr Trump will keep his word and challenge the result in the Supreme Court.
And he has appointed a team of scientists to advise him on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic - one of his top priorities, he said in his victory speech.
The US has had the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths of any country in the world - 10,906,000 and 245,000 respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Mr Trump has been criticised by some for his actions during the pandemic - which resulted in him catching the disease in September.
Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the president's top advisers, warned recently the US "could not possibly be positioned more poorly" as it heads into winter.
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