Trump in tweet tirade over voter fraud story

Donald Trump has posted a series of tweets attacking the media, in a late night tirade in response to reports criticising his claim that millions of people voted illegally.

Retweeting messages of his supporters, some of them not old enough to vote, the President-elect targeted senior CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny in five separate posts over the course of 40 minutes.

Mr Zeleny had reported that Mr Trump was showing signs of being a "sore winner" and had "zero evidence" to support his claim of mass voter fraud in favour of Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic candidate has now convincingly won the popular vote by at least two million ballots, but the Electoral College system means Mr Trump still took the presidency.

An in the latest example of the billionaire businessman's sensitivity to media criticism, he posted the first in his series of tweets at 9.14pm New York time, adding "do your job" to one of his supporter's posts.

Mr Trump has still delivered no evidence to support his earlier claim that millions of people voted illegally.

He said: "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

It was later reported that the false claim may have been based on an unverified tweet spread by far-right and conspiracy websites.

A number of pro-Trump websites claimed three million illegal immigrants voted in the US election, but did not provide any solid evidence to back the claim up.

Instead, the majority referred to a tweet posted in the days following the election by a man called Greg Phillips, who identified himself as the founder of an "election fraud reporting app".

Anger among Trump supporters on Twitter was reignited after Green Party candidate Jill Stein called for a recount of votes in Wisconsin.