Sterling: US President Donald Trump left the White House Saturday morning as the last crucial vote counts were about to come in from Pennsylvania and a few other battleground states. Already trailing Democrat Joe Biden in the all-important, state-by-state Electoral College vote tally, the handwriting on the wall was becoming impossible to ignore.

Trump was there when the major US television networks — first CNN then NBC, CBS, ABC and finally Fox — declared that new results from Pennsylvania had pushed Biden over the top — and into the White House, come January. Afterward, as thousands of exultant Biden supporters celebrated raucously in front of the White House and elsewhere in the US capital, the Trump motorcade made its way back to the White House. The president had nothing else on his schedule Saturday.