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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory in the presidential election, acknowledging the evidence only after the Electoral College sanctioned the election results on Monday.
McConnell is one of Trump’s main allies in Congress and supported the incumbent president when he was impeached by the House of Representatives, accelerating his acquittal in the Senate trial, but also the speedy appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court from the United States.
“Since this morning, our country has officially had a president-elect and a vice-president-elect. Many millions of Americans have expected the presidential election to have a different outcome, but our constitutional system has processes that determine who will take office on January 20. The Electoral College has failed, so today I want to congratulate Joe Biden. The president-elect is no stranger to the Senate. He dedicated his life to public service. I also congratulate our colleague from California, Senator Kamala Harris, “said Mitch McConnell, according to The Independent.
McConnell is known for his fierce partisanship
One of the Republicans known for tough partisanship, McConnell was the one who blocked the appointment of Barrack Obama-nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in March 2016, following the death of Antonin Scalia.
McConnell later argued that the president could not make the nomination because he was in his last year in office, although there was no constitutional provision on the matter, and time was more than enough to complete the process. The deadline would have been January 3, 2017, the date on which the new congress would take office. In the end, it was Donald Trump who made the appointment to the Supreme Court, in the person of Neil Gorsuch.
However, McConnell did not respect his own rigor in 2020, following the death of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg a month and a half before the election and forced the procedure for the speedy confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, showing that the real reason for the blockade of Garland in 2016 was just about his severe ideological partisanship and political calculations.
Publisher: Adrian Dumitru