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- Eric Trump yelled at his father's campaign data analysts at the White House as results came in on election night, according to a new book.
- Eric had predicted to friends the night before that his father would win reelection with 322 electoral college votes.
- "We pay you to do this," he reported yelled at staffers in the White House Map Room. "How can this be happening?"
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Eric Trump, the former president's son, "flipped out" and yelled at his father's campaign data analysts at the White House as results came in on election night, according to an excerpt from a new book by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
Eric had predicted to friends the night before that his father would win reelection with 322 electoral college votes, according to the book, "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year." He was upset that campaign staff were reporting otherwise.
"We pay you to do this," he yelled at staffers in the White House Map Room, which had been transformed into a Trump campaign war room. "How can this be happening?
Eric was reportedly confused as to how votes could continue to be counted through election night, as states began to process the unprecedented amount of absentee ballots, work which was delayed by some state legislatures until election day.
"The election is being stolen," Eric said. "Where are these votes coming from? How is this legit?"
Biden ultimately won the election with 306 electoral college votes to Trump's 232. He trounced Trump in the popular vote count by more than 7 million votes.
Journalist Michael Wolff also reported in his new book, "Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency," that Eric "grilled" staffers after Fox News called Arizona for Biden before the other networks had.
"Where are these votes in Arizona coming from? How is this happening?" he said. "You said we were good."
The ex-president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was reportedly also just as confident that their dad would win reelection and assured others on election night, "there's no way we lose" to Joe Biden.
The then-president similarly yelled at staffers as his leads in key states like Pennsylvania shrank throughout the night, Leonnig and Rucker reported.
"Why are they still counting votes?" Trump said to his deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark. "The election's closed. Are they counting ballots that came in afterward? What the hell is going on?"
Spokespeople for both Trump and Eric denied yelling at staffers, according to Leonnig and Rucker.
Trump falsely claimed that the election had been rigged and that he'd won states, including Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which were then too close to call during a speech from the White House on election night.
"This is a fraud on the American public," Trump said, beginning months of lies about the election results. "This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election."