"If you count the legal votes I easily win," Trump said, providing no evidence for his claim. "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us."

His message came as new tallies show his lead dwindling in Georgia and Pennsylvania. While Trump retains a pathway to 270 electoral votes, it is growing smaller.

Trump said he was advocating for a halt in counting of "votes that came in late," and went on to tout races that had already been called for him.

"I’ve already decisively won many critical states, including massive victories," he claimed.

Trump says he is "on track to do OK in Arizona". He adds: "Our goal is to protect the integrity of the election we will not allow the corruption to steal such an important election."

Arizona has not been called and the latest tally - based on 88% of ballots counted - shows Biden leading there.

Trump says it's "amazing how the mail-in ballots are so one-sided".

Democrats are known to use postal voting more - in fact so far approximately 75% of postal votes have been for Joe Biden.

Trump ran a campaign based on false claims that postal voting was more vulnerable to fraud, and encouraged his supporters not to vote by post.

The president tells the news conference that there's "a lot of litigation because of how unfair this process was". Most of the cases have been launched by his campaign to stop counting in battleground states.