Trump told to 'knock this off' on immigrant vote fraud claim

Image caption Senator Graham says the president's voter fraud claim is "going to erode his ability to govern this country"

Republicans have admonished President Donald Trump after he repeated his unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud in November's US election.

Mr Trump told congressional leaders at a reception on Monday that millions of undocumented immigrants had voted illegally for Hillary Clinton.

But Senator Lindsey Graham called the comments "inappropriate", adding that Mr Trump should "knock this off".

House Speaker Paul Ryan also said there was no evidence to support his claims.

"I've seen no evidence to that effect. I've made that very, very clear," the Wisconsin Republican told reporters on Tuesday.

Image caption Donald Trump has spent his first full day as president.

During a closed-doors meeting on Monday night, the Republican president regurgitated his incorrect claim that three to five million undocumented immigrants had illegally voted.

Mr Trump, who first made the claim in a late November tweet, has never provided any evidence for the conspiracy theory.

"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," he tweeted at the time.

Trump claims millions voted illegally in presidential poll

Is there any evidence of illegal votes?

  • Unsubstantiated claim was started without evidence by self-styled conservative voter fraud specialist Greg Phillips, who tweeted "Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million"
  • His tweets were picked up by right-wing websites like Infowars.com, which has made false claims in the past
  • Fact-checking website Snopes.com says there is "zero evidence" that "illegal aliens" voted in election

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday the president continued to "maintain that belief based on studies and evidence that people have presented to him".

Mr Spicer was repeatedly pressed, but did not provide any further details.

The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, received nearly three million votes more than Mr Trump, who won the presidency by prevailing in key swing states.

Any notion of widespread voter fraud was widely rejected as bogus when Mr Trump made the same claim in November.

Mr Graham, a South Carolina senator, rebuked Mr Trump for his comments, saying they were "the most inappropriate thing for the president to say without proof".

He continued that the president "seems to be obsessed with the idea that he could not have possibly lost the popular vote without cheating and fraud".

"I would urge the president to knock this off," he added.

Republican Pennsylvania Representative Charlie Dent also weighed in, saying Mr Trump needed to move on and "get to the serious business of governing".