US election live updates: Democrats blast Joe Biden over ‘catastrophic mistake’

Former staffers of Barack Obama have let loose on what they say was a “catastrophic mistake” by Joe Biden.

Welcome back to our live coverage of all the fallout from the American election.

There is but one state left to call – come on Arizona, we’re waiting.

But it won’t make a difference. Donald Trump will be president. He needed 270 Electoral College votes to be elected. He has 301 to Kamala Harris’ 226, and Mr Trump will likely pick up 11 more votes from Arizona, giving him a final tally of 312.

Yesterday, Mr Trump announced that Susie Wiles, one of his campaign directors, would become the White House chief of staff – the first woman to hold that job.

Meanwhile the former administration staffer Kash Patel, widely tipped to be appointed CIA director by Mr Trump, has warned he is ready to “come after” the President-elect’s critics in the media, particularly those who debunked his claims that the 2020 election was “rigged”.

One does wonder why the Democrats forgot to rig this year’s election. They had a lot on, maybe? Sephora offered a sale that was just too distracting, and left no time to bother with huge nationwide conspiracies? Quite the oversight, in any case.

The recriminations among Democrats continue, by the way, with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and several top staffers of the former president Barack Obama unloading on Joe Biden for taking too long to withdraw from the race.

Read on for the latest updates.