Running out of legal strategies to overturn the results of the US election, Donald Trump appears to have decided he's going to tweet and retweet his way back into power.
On Wednesday (NZ time) the US President lost another legal battle - failing to have Pennsylvania's results thrown out, the state certifying Joe Biden the winner and rightful owner of its 20 votes in the Electoral College.
And Biden has been given the greenlight to use federal funds and services to assist in his transition to the White House by the US General Services Administration (GSA), and has been allowed to set up a website - buildbackbetter.gov - using the official US government's internet suffix, .gov.
While Trump has taken credit for allowing this to happen, he's still refusing to admit defeat.
"It is a tale of two transitions - the President is still fighting in court, fruitlessly of course," Brookings Institution Center for Effective Public Management senior fellow John Hudak told The AM Show on Tuesday.
"None of his cases have been successful in any meaningful way. Most of them have been thrown out, sort of laughed out of court really. But he is still maintaining this legal effort.
"But at this point, even Republicans in the Congress, the states and a majority of the public recognise that this is over, and that on January 20, Joe Biden will take the oath."
Trump made a brief public appearance to brag about the performance of the US stock market, which has begun climbing earlier this month on news of promising COVID-19 vaccines, and surged on Tuesday (NZ time) when the formal transition to a Biden presidency was announced.
"The stock market has just broken 30,000 - never been broken, that number. It's a sacred number, 30,000," Trump said in a minute-long press conference at the White House. "Nobody thought they'd ever see it."
He didn't take questions and refrained from making false claims about the election result or spread any conspiracy theories. It's been a different story on Twitter though, with the President claiming there were "were more votes than people who voted" in some states, bemoaning the "most corrupt election in American political history" and calling it a "hoax".
He also retweeted a number of others, notably Independence Day star Randy Quaid. In one tweet, Quaid - appearing in extreme close-up as a strobe light illuminates his face in different colours - rants about conservative network Fox News, crediting it with losing the election for Trump.
In another, Quaid says "Lilliputians" have tied Americans down, talks about "dreams of icebergs melting into dinosaurs", promotes an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about philanthropist George Soros, and rails against Big Pharma, fakers, phonies, bullies, liars, anarchists, communists and others who want to "destroy the President".
Trump also retweeted a few other tweets by Quaid which called him the "greatest President this country has ever had" and "an astonishing man of the people", and calling for an election re-do.
"Thank you Randy, working hard to clean up the stench of the 2020 Election Hoax!" Trump wrote.
Quaid has had numerous legal problems in recent years, spending much of his time in Canada away from US law enforcement after being accused of burglary and fraud. He's recently been living in Vermont, after a judge voided an extradition request.
Trump has played down the significance of the GSA's cooperation with the Biden team, saying it "does not determine who the next President of the United States will be".
