Trump Calls Electoral College 'Genius' as He Closes Out 'Thank You' Tour

— -- On the last stop of his "Thank You" tour following his election victory, President-elect Donald Trump praised the Electoral College system that he had previously decried as corrupt during the campaign, calling it "genius."

"I never appreciated it until now, how genius it was, what they had in mind, because at the time they didn't want everybody going to Boston and New York and everything else would be forgotten," the president-elect said. "It's genius, I'm telling you it's genius."

Trump won the November election thanks to the Electoral College, clinching 306 votes to put him over the 270 threshold required for victory, even though Hillary Clinton is ahead in the popular vote by more than 2 million votes, according to the most recent tally.

He again raised the possibility that there was illegal voting in the election by raising the idea that perhaps the Clinton campaign was expressing confidence that they were going to win before the election because "maybe their information was how many people voted illegally." Trump has previously made the unsubstantiated claim that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." His claims have not been independently verified, and election officials from numerous states have criticized Trump's claim of having won the popular vote nationwide and said that there was no widespread illegal voting in their states.

Holding today's rally at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, Trump returned to the site of one of his biggest campaign crowds back in August 2015, when he drew 30,000 people to the stadium.

Trump offered his thanks to the crowd for their support, saying that "this is where it all began," and thanked the people of the South broadly, saying, "Boy, did we do well in the South."

He had tweeted this morning that he expected another big crowd.

The rally is expected to be the president-elect's final public event before he goes to his Mar-A-Lago estate for the Christmas holiday.