Martin Luther King Junior’s described his country as the ‘Divided States of America’ as he criticised President Donald Trump for giving racism a ‘new licence’.

The human rights leader spoke as Americans anxiously wait to hear who will take the keys to the Oval Office, with hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots yet to be counted.

In one of the tightest US presidential elections in history, former vice-president Joe Biden is currently in the lead with 264 electoral college votes, while Trump trails slightly behind with 214. A total of 270 is needed to win.

The neck-and-neck race has seen Trump falsely claim that the Democrats are rigging mail-in ballots and is attempting to stop counting early, while dozens of his supporters – some of them armed – have become violent at counting centres.

Martin Luther King III suggested it was dangerous that the president’s followers ‘believe everything he says’. He told Good Morning Britain: ‘Its very perplexing we’ve allowed an American president to lie to the public… who continues to spew disinformation and lead us down dangerous paths.’

He said the United States were anything but united and that if the former vice-president wins, he will have to become ‘very creative’ to bring a ‘divided’ nation together.

The activist added: ‘He’s going to have to show some significant leadership to try to bring people together. That’s what we need more than anything in my personal judgement because we have numerous crises existing.

‘Racism is still looming very large, in addition to the pandemic which tragically is killing people and the numbers are off the chain… There is a big job to do but now is the time to really show a different kind of leadership and ultimately over a period of time.

‘It’s not going to happen in one election it may be a few elections before we can get back truly on track as the United States of America we are the united divided America.’

Presenter Piers Morgan asked whether the US has ever been ‘truly united’, Mr King said there have been ‘spurts of periods’ but we are ‘not there yet’.

He added when President Barack Obama came into office, there was an initial ‘unification’ but that ‘elements came apart’ over his eight-year premiership.

‘So no, we are not there. That’s why when people say “have you achieved your father’s dream” my answer is always absolutely not.

‘It does not mean that we do not have the potential to get there but we’ve got a long way to go in this nation. Dad wanted to eradicate poverty, racism and militarism or violence from our society.

‘Unfortunately, poverty has grown and racism has taken a new position because the President has given it a new licence, whereas at one point it was sort of suppressed, but clearly we’ve got a lot of work to do.’

Mr King’s comments came as Biden took the lead in his father’s birthplace of Georgia on Friday morning.

The Democratic presidential candidate is now 917 votes ahead of Trump, according to CNN, having previously lagged behind the president in the crucial battleground.

Trump blamed a burst pipe for helping Biden narrow his lead in the count in Georgia.

Trump told a White House press conference Thursday: ‘In Georgia a pipe burst in a faraway location totally unrelated to the location of what was happening, and they stopped counting for four hours, and a lot of things happened.

‘The election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. We had margins of 300,000.’

The burst pipe did delay the count by four hours but did not damage any ballots, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

It comes after the president told Thursday’s press conference that he ‘easily wins’ the election if ‘legal’ votes are counted, having made unfounded claims that mail-in ballots are being tampered with by the opposition.

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