WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump still won’t bring him­self to con­cede the elec­tion he deci­sive­ly lost to Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden. But he’s now acknowl­edg­ing he will leave the White House if Biden’s win is affirmed by the Elec­toral Col­lege, which is firm­ly on track to do just that in a few weeks.

“Cer­tain­ly I will,” he said Thurs­day when asked if he will vacate the premis­es after elec­tors make Biden’s win for­mal. “But you know that.”

Trump, who took ques­tions from reporters for the first time since the elec­tion, unleashed anoth­er round of com­plaints about the vote and the­atri­cal warn­ings that “a lot of things” would hap­pen before the Elec­toral Col­lege meets Dec. 14 that could pos­si­bly change results. But while he’s stir­ring uncer­tain­ty about how he will behave in the weeks ahead, there is no real sus­pense about the outcome.

All states must cer­ti­fy their results before the Elec­toral Col­lege meets and any chal­lenge must be resolved by Dec. 8. States have already begun that process, includ­ing Michi­gan, where Trump and his allies tried and failed to delay the process, and Geor­gia and Pennsylvania.

Noth­ing stands in the way of Biden tak­ing office Jan. 20 with a clear mar­gin of elec­toral votes.

No con­ces­sion is need­ed from Trump for Biden to become pres­i­dent, none has been offered and Trump may nev­er admit he was beat­en fair and square. But there were a few signs that Trump was com­ing to terms with his loss.

At one point he expressed con­cern that Biden would get the glo­ry from pend­ing coro­n­avirus vac­cines. “Don’t let him take cred­it for the vac­cines,” Trump said, “because the vac­cines were me, and I pushed peo­ple hard­er than they’ve ever been pushed before.”

The fact that a sit­ting Amer­i­can pres­i­dent even had to address whether or not he would leave office after los­ing reelec­tion under­scores the extent to which Trump has smashed one con­ven­tion after anoth­er over the last three weeks.

Vote cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at the local and state lev­el is typ­i­cal­ly a min­is­te­r­i­al task that gets lit­tle notice, but that changed with Trump’s fierce but fruit­less legal chal­lenges and attempts to manip­u­late the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process in bat­tle­ground states he lost.

No evi­dence has emerged of the wide­spread vot­ing fraud that Trump and his legal team have repeat­ed­ly alleged, only to be slapped down by judges and state elec­tion officials.

Trump spoke to reporters in the White House’s ornate Diplo­mat­ic Recep­tion Room after hold­ing a tele­con­fer­ence with U.S. mil­i­tary lead­ers sta­tioned across the globe. He thanked them for their ser­vice, joked that they shouldn’t eat too much turkey, then turned to the elec­tion after end­ing the call. He repeat­ed griev­ances and angri­ly denounced offi­cials in Geor­gia and Penn­syl­va­nia, two key states that helped give Biden the win.

Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion has already giv­en the green light for a for­mal tran­si­tion to get under­way. Yet Trump took issue with Biden mov­ing forward.

“I think it’s not right that he’s try­ing to pick a Cab­i­net,” Trump said, even though offi­cials from both teams are already work­ing togeth­er to get Biden’s team up to speed.

Asked if he’ll attend the inau­gu­ra­tion, Trump said he knows the answer but doesn’t want to say.

He said he’ll go to Geor­gia to ral­ly sup­port­ers before two Sen­ate runoff elec­tions that will deter­mine which par­ty con­trols the Sen­ate. The White House said that ral­ly is expect­ed Dec. 5.

One of the rea­sons Repub­li­cans have stood by Trump and his base­less claims of fraud has been to keep his loy­al base ener­gized for those Jan 5 runoffs. But Trump, in his remarks, open­ly ques­tioned whether that elec­tion would be fair, cast­ing sus­pi­cions that could damp­en Repub­li­can turnout.

“I think you’re deal­ing with a very fraud­u­lent sys­tem,” he said. “I’m very wor­ried about that.” He said: “Peo­ple are very dis­ap­point­ed that we were robbed.”

Trump made clear that he will prob­a­bly nev­er for­mal­ly con­cede, even if he said he would leave the White House.

“It’s gonna be a very hard thing to con­cede,” he said. “Because we know there was mas­sive fraud.”

Elec­tors “will have made a mis­take” by affirm­ing Biden’s win, he said.

Yet “time isn’t on our side.”

Will he run again in 2024? Trump said he doesn’t “want to talk about 2024 yet.”

“This has a long way to go,” Trump said, even though he lost.