Donald Trump’s trademark confidence was absent during his Thursday night speech from the White House, with commentators noting he appeared “defeated” as he made unsubstantiated claims he was being cheated out of re-election.

Former White House director of communications Anthony Scaramucci said the president “looked and sounded defeated” in an address in which Mr Trump “told a litany of lies, but the delivery was meek”.

“Expect a few more days of squirming, then he’ll slink away,” Mr Scaramucci added.

Republican pundit SE Cupp, formerly of Fox News and now with CNN, said: “This is a sad, small man, incoherently rattling off his grievances, because there’s literally nothing else he can do to stop what’s happening – legally and legitimately.”

Television personality Demi Burnett said the president’s “demeanour seems sad and defeated”, while comedian John Fugelsang said the speech was “overmedicated lethargic gibberish even by Combover Caligula’s standards”.

Dr Eugene Gu, who won a lawsuit against Mr Trump in 2018 for blocking him on Twitter, said the president “sounded totally beaten down and defeated”.

Democratic activist Scott Dworkin added: “Trump is ranting right not saying a bunch of nonsense and lies. He looks super tired and defeated.”

Journalist Molly Knight said the president “looks so pathetic and weak. Defeated, humiliated, over. He can’t even put his heart into these lies”.

And in a comment made on CNN and picked up widely on Twitter, network anchor Anderson Cooper said Mr Trump was “like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun, realising his time is over, but he just hasn’t accepted it and he wants to take everybody down with him, including the country”.