US President-elect Joe Biden took the first steps Sunday to enter the White House in 73 days as Donald Trump again refused to admit defeat and tried to cast doubt on the election results.
With congratulations from world leaders and supporters suffering from hangovers after an evening of celebrations, Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter feed, @ Transition46.
Meanwhile, Trump was playing golf on his course near Washington, the same place where he was on Saturday when US television networks broke the news that Biden had obtained enough Electoral College votes for victory.
“Since when does Lamestream Media say who will be our next president?” Trump complained in a tweet on Sunday.
Trump plans to file a series of lawsuits next week, according to his attorney Rudy Giuliani, who said he had “a lot of evidence” of fraud.
But former President George W. Bush said “the result is clear” and added that he had called “President-elect” Biden and Harris to extend his congratulations.
Bush said in a statement that “the American people can be confident that this election was fundamentally fair … We must unite for the good of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future.”
Biden’s transition website lists four priorities: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity, and climate change.
“The team that is meeting will face these challenges on day one,” he said in a reference to January 20, 2021, when Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.
Biden, who will turn 78 on November 20, is the oldest elected to the White House. Harris, 56, a senator from California, is the first woman, the first black person and the first person from South Asia to be elected vice president.
Biden plans to appoint a task force Monday to address the coronavirus
pandemic, which has left more than 237,000 people dead in the United States and is increasing across the country.
He has also announced plans to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and will reportedly issue an executive order on his first day in office to reverse Trump’s travel ban to mostly Muslim countries.
Biden has vowed to appoint a cabinet that reflects the diversity of the country, though he may have trouble getting approval from more progressive appointees if Republicans retain control of the Senate, a result that will hinge on two runoff elections in Georgia in January.
‘Accept the inevitable’
Biden, who after John F. Kennedy is only the second Catholic to be elected president of the United States, attended church Sunday morning in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
He also visited the graves of his son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and his first wife and daughter, who died in a car accident in 1972.
The Trump campaign has raised legal challenges to the results in several states, but no evidence has emerged of widespread wrongdoing affecting the results.
Giuliani told the Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” program that Trump’s team would file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania on Monday against officials “for violating civil rights, holding unfair elections (and) violating state law.”
“The first lawsuit will be Pennsylvania. The second will be Michigan or Georgia. And in the course of the week, we should fix everything,” Giuliani said.
First lady Melania Trump also weighed in on Sunday, tweeting: “The American people deserve fair elections. Every legal vote, not illegal, must be counted.”
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Biden’s senior adviser, Symone Sanders, dismissed the court challenges as “unfounded legal strategies.”
Biden received nearly 74.6 million votes to Trump’s 70.4 million nationwide and has a 279-214 lead in the Electoral College that determines the presidency.
Biden also leads in Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes, and Georgia, which has 16. If he wins both, he would end up with 306 electoral votes, the same total that Trump won in 2016 when he upset Hillary Clinton.
Only two Republican senators, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, have congratulated Biden.
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina said the Republican Party has a “responsibility” to help convince Trump that it is time to give up.
Romney, who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment, said the president will eventually “accept the inevitable.”
The Utah senator added that “I would rather see the world watching a more elegant exit, but that is not in the nature of man.”
‘Don’t concede, Mr. President’
But Trump’s ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the 74-year-old president should keep fighting.
“We will work with Biden if he wins, but Trump has not lost,” Graham said on Fox News. “Don’t give in, Mr. President. Fight hard.”
In a victory speech Saturday, Biden promised to unify the bitterly divided nation and reached out to Trump supporters, saying, “They are not our enemies, they are Americans.”
“Let’s give ourselves a chance,” he said. “That this grim age of demonization in America begins to end, here and now.”
Financial markets welcomed Biden’s victory, with stocks soaring in Tokyo and Hong Kong, and US futures on Wall Street on Sunday night.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other European countries sent congratulations to Biden, along with Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan and South Korea.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he would wait until all legal challenges are resolved, while Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, has yet to make any official comment.
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