DESPERATE Donald Trump ordered in the lawyers in an attempt to cling to power despite Joe Biden finally reaching the required 270 Electoral College votes in the Presidential election.
This was enough to push Mr Biden over the top to 273 votes against the 214 for Mr Trump - but, in this extraordinary election, it seems as if that alone will not be enough to secure the presidency.
Instead, it now feels inevitable that this contest will be concluded in the courts.
Holed up in the White House in Washington DC, Mr Trump filed lawsuits earlier this week in an attempt to stop and investigate the counts in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.
The incumbent President has suggested there have been multiple instances of electoral fraud in those states but has failed yet to provide any evidence to substantiate his claims.
"Let's give each other a chance," Biden said. "It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. Stop treating our opponents as enemies.
"I will work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as for those who did."
Nevertheless, Mr Trump remains adamant, for now, that his defeat has come as a result of illegitimate means.
His
latest unhinged rant on Twitter, written all in capital letters, reads: "The observers were not allowed into the counting rooms. I won the election, got 71 million legal votes.
"Bad things happened which our observers were not allowed to see. Millions of mail-in ballots were sent to people who never asked for them!"
Even a basic analysis of the election results rather debunks Mr Trump's pathetic howls of an injustice, though - and Republican officials have confirmed they have been able to observe the counts.
After all, any genuine attempts at widespread fraud by the Democrats presumably did not exactly go as planned.
For a start, Mr Trump himself did not actually have a particularly bad election - he outperformed the polls and won the perennial swing states of Ohio and Florida on election night itself.
The New Yorker media mogul and failed businessman received more than 70 million votes, the most ever by a sitting US President and over seven million more votes than he received in 2016.
Additionally, in the down-ballot races, the Republicans made some wholly unexpected gains in the House of Representatives - and, while the Democrats still retained their majority in the lower chamber, they do not appear likely to match that feat in the Senate.
Mr Biden may have rebuilt the Blue Wall in the Mid West with victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania but this was certainly not a Blue Wave election.
Under the terms of American politics, this means Mr Biden will be forced to negotiate and make deals with his political opponents in Congress.
This was something with which recent Democrat President Barack Obama struggled at times but Mr Biden has already signalled his intention to end what he referred to as a "grim era of demonisation" in political discourse.
Hopefully, on that front, Mr Biden's 36-year tenure in the upper house, and
his strong professional relationship with sometimes obstinate Senate majority leader - Republican Mitch McConnell - will serve him well.
Following yet another divisive election campaign, American politics could well do with a bipartisan effort to heal the open wounds which threaten still to rip apart the country.
And, in line with this, Mr Trump and his supporters will soon simply have to accept he has become the first one-term President since George HW Bush in 1992, and only the second since Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Rather than fade into obscurity, though, it would be a surprise if, even outside of the office of the presidency, Mr Trump did not curate some sort of mythical legacy for his supporters to lap up.
Mr Trump Jr favours his father's aggressive style and, by readily spreading various disparate conspiracy theories, operates from exactly the same playbook as the outgoing President by intentionally confusing fact with fiction.
President Trump may have been defeated by Mr Biden in this election but Trumpism has not been defeated - and, for now, the fabric of American society remains torn asunder.
Mr Biden's presidency will be judged on how well he repairs it, if indeed he can at all.
CONGRESS
Democrats [222] House [213] Republicans
Democrat gains
(-12)
| GA-07 NC-02 NC-06
|
|
|
| CA-21 CA-25 CA-39
CA-48 FL-26 FL-27
IA-01 IA-02 MI-03
MN-07 NM-02 NY-11
NY-22 OK-05 SC-01
UT-04
|
|
218 required for a majority. MI-03 was a Republican gain from Libertarian
Democrats [50] Senate [50] Republicans
