Rolling updates: Some Republicans break with president after he says Democrats trying to ‘steal’ election

Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden pulled ahead in the battleground state of Georgia by 917 votes, CNN and the New York Times reported on Friday, as the tallying of votes continues in the state.
Mr Biden gained ground in Pennsylvania and Nevada on Thursday as the slow-moving vote count moved him closer to defeating US president Donald Trump.
Late on Thursday night, Mr Trump doubled down on his claims that the election process was fraudulent as Mr Biden appeared to be in touching distance of winning the electoral college.
The US president escalated allegations that Democrats were trying to steal the election, telling reporters that the ballot-counting process was unfair and corrupt, having made similar allegations late on election night.
Speaking at a press conference in the White House, the president alleged: If you count the legal votes, I easily win, if you count the illegal votes they can try and steal the election from us.
Denouncing mail-in ballots , which have been used by millions of Americans in this election, as corrupt he said that the voting apparatus of the states where counts are continuing are run by Democrats.
We were winning, he said, and our numbers started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.
As expected, Mr Bidens lead increased when mail-in ballots began to be counted in recent days, while Mr Trump performed better with in-person election-day voting.
Arguing that he decisively won many critical states like Florida and Iowa, Mr Trump said that pollsters got it knowingly wrong, creating the illusion of momentum for Mr Biden.
We think we will win the election very easily. We think theres going to be so much litigation, he said, predicting that the election will end up in the Supreme Court.
We cant have an election stolen like this, he said. Its not a question of who wins, Republican, Democrats, Joe myself. We cant let this happen to our country.