United States President Donald Trump on Friday appeared to come closest yet to accepting his defeat in the 2020 elections as he declared that his administration will not order a new lockdown to control the coronavirus, CNN reported.

“I will not – this administration will not be doing a lockdown,” Trump said during a speech at the White House about vaccine development efforts. “Hopefully whatever happens in the future – who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell.”

Trump added that his administration will be “very vigilant and very careful” but not impose a lockdown under any circumstances.

The US president’s remarks came after the media projected results in two uncalled states. Trump was projected to win North Carolina, according to The Washington Post, while President-elect Joe Biden was projected to secure Georgia. With this, Biden was projected to get 306 electoral votes, while Trump would bag 232.

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Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and filed a flurry of lawsuits in the last few days to challenge the election outcome.

On Friday, Trade Adviser Peter Navarro said that the White House was planning for Trump to serve a second term. “We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term,” he told Fox Business.

On Thursday, US federal officials rejected Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 elections, and said that the polls were the “most secure in American history”. They said that there was no evidence to show that the election process had been compromised.

Biden, meanwhile, began taking over the White House earlier this week. He also named a task force to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Biden’s campaign said that former US surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy and former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr David Kessler will be co-chairs of the working group.

Since the election day on November 3, Trump has falsely claimed that there was a conspiracy by the Democrats to stop him from achieving another term. When the vote count in the key states of Georgia and Pennsylvania finally tipped in Biden’s favour, Trump’s campaign declared the “election is far from over”, and announced the activation of “legal challenge teams” in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump’s lawsuits were dismissed in Michigan and Georgia.

After Biden’s victory in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, Trump again insisted that the race was not over and claimed he had “WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT”.

A day later, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani claimed he had “a lot of evidence” of fraud, but did not provide any proof, according to AFP. The president, meanwhile, continued to make false claims on Twitter that the election was being “stolen” from him. All of Trump’s tweets were flagged as being disputed and potentially misleading.