Our view: Democracy, but not as we know it

Trump falsely claimed victory over Democratic rival Joe Biden with millions of votes still uncounted

President Donald Trump would prefer to challenge the US election vote, rather than step down.

Confirmed lovers of the original TV space opera Star Trek will know how James T Kirk succeeded in passing a key test at Starfleet Academy — he cheated, changing the parameters of a computer-generated no-win scenario so that he could pass it, even though it was designed to fail all challengers.

Donald Trump is trying to do something similar by cheating his way to another term in office. For the past four, we have been listening to him complain about what he terms “fake news”. Yesterday, we heard him pronounce the falsest news of all — that he had won the 2020 US presidential election despite the fact that nowhere near all the votes were counted.