White House staff members can't wait to be 'free' of Donald Trump: report

The White House staff are counting the days till US President Donald Trump loses the election to Democrat nominee Joe Biden as they apparently want to be "free" of him, said a report on Wednesday.

“Something I’m thinking about tonight: how many White House officials and Trump allies have told me in the last few weeks that they’re counting down the days until they‘re free,” New York Magazine White House correspondent Olivia Nuzzi reported Tuesday.

Nuzzi further stated that the White House staff thinks Trump will lose the election and cannot defeat Joe Biden, despite whatever they say in public.

“They don’t think he‘ll win the election, even if they publicly say they do, and they don’t really care,” Nuzzi reported.

US presidential election hangs in the balance

The US presidential election hung in the balance on Wednesday, with a handful of states set to decide the outcome in the coming hours or days, even as Donald Trump falsely claimed victory and made unfounded allegations of electoral fraud.

President Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden both still have possible paths to reach the needed 270 Electoral College votes to win the White House, as states keep counting mail-in ballots that surged amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Shortly after Biden said he was confident of winning the contest once the votes are counted, Trump appeared at the White House in the early hours to declare victory and said his lawyers would be taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, without specifying what they would claim.

"We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election," Trump said, in an extraordinary attack on the electoral process by a sitting president. "This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop." He provided no evidence to back up his claim of fraud.

Additional reporting by Reuters