PIERS MORGAN: Dear Donald, you’ve lost and - unless you actually have real PROOF of fraud - stop sulking, suck it up, and go now with your head held high before this pathetic tantrum wipes out everything your followers still have to admire you for

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Dear Donald,

It's over.

Done.

Finished.

Kaput.

Your presidency, to borrow the words of Monty Python's legendary dead parrot sketch, is 'not pining, it's passed on! This presidency is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late presidency! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-presidency!'

I say this not to gloat or mock you - there are plenty of your enemies gleefully doing that already - but to be your brutally honest friend at a time when you need brutal honesty from those who actually like you.

And despite your notoriously thin skin, I believe from my personal experience that you do value friends who give it to you straight.

That's why you called me for a long very cordial chat two weeks ago, despite me being one of your most ferocious critics over your woeful handling of the pandemic and George Floyd protests.

As former US president Harry Truman said: 'I can always get along with an honest friend.'

I am that friend today.

You won't want to hear what I'm saying now, but that doesn't make me wrong to say it.

Dear Donald, It's over. Done. Finished. Kaput. Your presidency, to borrow the words of Monty Python's legendary dead parrot sketch, is 'not pining, it's passed on!

Just a few days ago, you reiterated this view: 'Winning is easy, losing is never easy, not for me it's not.' I get it. Your whole brand is predicated on you winning. But sometimes even you lose.

The reason all the major US TV networks have called the election for Joe Biden is not because they all hate you. That would be absurd given one of them is Fox News which has been your biggest cheerleader for the past five years.

No, it's because he won, and you lost.

It's just as simple as that.

I know you hate losing.

'My whole life is about winning,' you wrote in your book Art of the Deal, 'I don't lose often. I almost never lose.'

Just a few days ago, you reiterated this view: 'Winning is easy, losing is never easy, not for me it's not.'

I get it.

Your whole brand is predicated on you winning.

That intense desire not to lose, or worse be seen as a loser, burns inside your soul like a raging forest fire.

It's what makes you successful.

It's what made you a billionaire real estate tycoon.

It's what you made you a massive TV star.

It's what drove you to pull off the political shock of the century and win the White House in 2016.

But sometimes even you lose.

And this is one of those times, even if you refuse to admit it to yourself.

Joe Biden's beaten you because he has that one thing you don't have, or never show us you have: empathy. He knows what it's like to suffer terrible loss, and it's evident in the way he speaks to his fellow Americans with such kindness, tolerance, respect and understanding

Let me be clear: you're perfectly entitled legally to demand a recount in those states where the current voting state of play allows it, like Wisconsin and Georgia.

I suspect you'll still lose those states if they recount the votes, but you can have your recounts if you really want to be declared a loser all over again.

However, even if you did win Wisconsin and Georgia on a recount, you still wouldn't have enough Electoral College votes to be re-elected.

To do that, you'd have to win Pennsylvania too and you're currently 43,000 votes behind Biden there – way beyond any permissible recount gap.

And what you're NOT entitled to do is brand the whole election a fraud on the American people or claim your presidency has been stolen from you.

Or rather, you are if you can actually produce hard evidence to support your claims.

And you haven't.

You've had six days to put up or shut up on these outlandish conspiracy theories and so far all we've had is your lawyer Rudy Giuliani ranting and raving about democracy being under attack, from a mis-booked Four Seasons Landscaping site in Philadelphia that had nothing to do with the hotel chain as you wrongly assumed when you tweeted about it.

If ever there was a glaring indication that your presidency's hit the rocks it was the comically absurd spectacle of Giuliani spewing uncorroborated nonsense about 'Democrat cheating' from outside an anonymous warehouse with broken windows situated between a porn shop and a crematorium.

Mad-dog Rudy was right about one thing though: democracy IS under attack - but from the likes of HIM and YOU, not the Democrats.

This election wasn't stolen from you, any more than Hillary Clinton's election was stolen from her four years ago.

Remember that?

Remember how rightly outraged you were that she and the Democrats told the world your win was a fake, a fraud, a Russian-orchestrated deceit on the American people?

Yet here you are doing exactly the same thing, only it's much worse because you're the incumbent president refusing to accept defeat when you've lost.

And if you don't concede in the time-honoured convention at such a moment, then you will cause enormous damage to America's reputation for upholding the values of democracy - and send a message to the world that it's now a behaving like a totalitarian state.

Is that what you really want your legacy to be?

Right now, you can still leave with your head held high.

In many ways, you've been a big winner too in this election, even if you lose the White House.

You got the second biggest vote in US presidential history (albeit Biden got the biggest), winning seven million more votes than in 2016 and nearly five million more than Hillary Clinton got then too.

Despite your critics constantly branding you a racist bigoted sexist homophobe, you increased your vote among black, Hispanic, Muslim and LGBTQ people.

You've almost certainly stopped the Democrats regaining control of the Senate.

You've INCREASED the Republican presence in the House of Representatives when everyone predicted significant seat losses.

And you've just had your third conservative judge in four years confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Until the pandemic struck, there were many other positives from your presidency: you presided over a very strong US economy and jobs market, you took out the leader of ISIS and Iran's top military general, you didn't declare war anywhere, you forged more peaceful relations with traditional US enemies like Russian and North Korea, you rightly made NATO countries pay their dues, you held China to long overdue account on trade, and you did some great under-appreciated work with criminal justice reform.

Of course, there were a number of negatives too, notably your refusal to take climate change seriously and pulling out of the Paris agreement, your dog-whistle lack of proper condemnation of white supremacists, your ban on transgender people in the military, your failure to replace Obamacare with a proper healthcare alternative, your trash-talking of American heroes like John McCain even after his death, and your appalling separation of children from their parents in immigrant detention centres.

But in the end, I believe you lost this election because of your two massive failures of leadership this year on the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd killing and subsequent protests.

But in the end, I believe you lost this election because of your two massive failures of leadership this year on the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd killing and subsequent protests. Pictured: Refrigerated morgues are set up in Brooklyn. More than 230,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US

The bottom line with George Floyd is that when it fell to you to reach out, comfort and listen to black Americans sickened by shocking racial injustice, you poured fuel onto the divisive fires. Pictured: BLM protesters in Washington D.C. after teh death of George Floyd

The bottom line with covid is that 230,000 people have now died on your watch from a virus that should have been far better contained in the US but wasn't because you never took it seriously enough and continue not to.

And the bottom line with George Floyd is that when it fell to you to reach out, comfort and listen to black Americans sickened by shocking racial injustice, you poured fuel onto the divisive fires.

Joe Biden's beaten you because he has that one thing you don't have, or never show us you have: empathy.

He knows what it's like to suffer terrible loss, and it's evident in the way he speaks to his fellow Americans with such kindness, tolerance, respect and understanding.

Your swaggering braggadocio style of macho egotistical leadership worked when the good times were rolling but failed abjectly when the country was plunged into massive crisis.

And now you've paid the ultimate political price – the loss of the election.

I know how much this must be hurting you.

As you said two weeks ago: 'Running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics puts pressure on me. Could you imagine if I lose? My whole life, what am I going to do? I'm going to say, 'I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics.' I'm not going to feel so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country?'

Well, you massively underestimated Joe Biden and now you've lost – to a good, decent man who ran a quietly confident and as it turned out, very effective campaign, and won the election fair and square.

You once told me: 'You gotta win. That's what it's all about. Muhammad Ali used to talk and talk, but he won. If you talk and talk but lose, the act doesn't play.'

Mr President, you've lost, and the 'BUT I WON!' act isn't playing.

It's time for you to stop fighting and admit defeat.

Even those many millions of Americans who loathe and detest you will have a grudging respect if you now concede gracefully, congratulate your opponent for his win, organise a smooth peaceful transition of power and turn up at his inauguration as Hillary turned up at yours.

That could help you if you decide to run again in 2024, or if one of your children does. The Trump brand remains stronger than ever despite all the predictions that it would be irrevocably repudiated in this election.

But if you refuse to concede, continue to falsely scream that the election was stolen, and pathetically snub President-Elect Biden, then you won't just go down as a loser, you'll go down as the sorest loser in US presidential history.

if you want Trumpism to dominate the Republican agenda after this election, something many will support, then stop this tantrum, put your toys back in the stroller, accept you've lost, call off the lawyers from their wild fraud goose chases, put a muzzle on Rudy Giuliani, wish Joe Biden well, and put American democracy before your bruised ego. Pictured: Rudy Giuliani speaks at a news conference in Pennsylvania after the election was called for Biden on Saturday

Donald, I say this as your friend: it's over.

I know how galling it must be to see all the insufferably smug gloating from your liberal enemies, but your side did the same to Hillary.

And if you want Trumpism to dominate the Republican agenda after this election, something many will support, then stop this tantrum, put your toys back in the stroller, accept you've lost, call off the lawyers from their wild fraud goose chases, put a muzzle on Rudy Giuliani, wish Joe Biden well, and put American democracy before your bruised ego.

In short, don't be The Biggest Loser.

Be the guy who gave it everything, came up short, but had the strength of character to acknowledge he was beaten in this race by the better candidate.

You'll thank me for saying this in the long run.

Kind regards

Piers