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WASHINGTON: US President-elect Joe Biden began the transfer of power on Sunday (Nov. 8) that Americans hope will turn the page from four years of divisions when his defeated rival, Donald Trump, refused to budge and he continued to question the election results.
As congratulations from world leaders and supporters fueled the hangover after a day of raucous celebrations, Biden, 77, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, 56, launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter feed, @ Transition 46.
It lists four priorities for a Biden-Harris administration: COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity, and climate change.
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“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, the junior senator from California, is the first woman and the first black person to be elected vice president.
Biden has already announced plans to appoint a task force Monday to tackle the coronavirus pandemic that has left more than 237,000 dead in the United States and is increasing across the country.
Biden, just the second Catholic to be president-elect of the United States, attended church Sunday morning in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, as Trump headed to the golf course.
US President Donald Trump walks to his caravan on the South Lawn of the White House. (Photo: AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)
Trump, 74, was playing golf at his club near Washington on Saturday morning when US television networks announced that Biden had garnered enough Electoral College votes for victory and returned for another round Sunday morning.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted saying he had won the election “by a long shot” and continued to make unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud on Twitter Sunday.
In a tweet, he quoted an ally, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as saying that “Britain’s best pollster wrote this morning that this was clearly a stolen election.”
In another series of tweets, Trump quoted a George Washington University law professor who testified on his behalf during his impeachment in Congress.
“We should look at the votes,” Jonathan Turley said in the tweets cited by Trump. “We should look at these accusations. We have a history of electoral problems in this country.”
Trump omitted another part of the professor’s opinion in which he stated that while there are “ample reasons for reviews”, “there is currently no evidence of systemic fraud in the elections.”
The Trump campaign has raised legal challenges to the results in several states, but so far no evidence has emerged of widespread irregularities invalidating the election results.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Symone Sanders, a senior adviser to Biden, dismissed the court challenges as “unfounded legal strategies.”
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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, and if he wins both states he would end up with 306 electoral votes, the same total won by Trump in 2016 when he displeased Hillary Clinton.
Supporters of President-elect Joe Biden celebrate at Black Lives Matter Plaza in front of the White House. (Photo: AFP / Olivier Douliery)
Only two Republican senators, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, have congratulated Biden on his victory, and Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina said the Republican Party has a “responsibility” to help convince Trump that it is time to give in. .
“What matters to me is whether the Republican Party will step up and help us preserve the integrity of this democracy,” Clyburn said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Romney, who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment, said the president “has every right to ask for a recount” but must be careful about his “choice of words.”
“I am convinced that once all the resources have been exhausted, if they are exhausted in a way that is not favorable to him, he will accept the inevitable,” Romney said.
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.”
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris arrives to deliver her victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware. (Photo: AFP / Jim Watson)
Speaking on ABC’s This Week, another Republican senator, Roy Blunt from Missouri said that “it is time for the president’s attorneys to present the facts and it is time for those facts to speak for themselves.”
But Trump’s ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said the president should keep fighting.
“We will work with Biden if he wins, but Trump has not lost,” Graham said on the Fox News Sunday Morning Futures program. “Don’t give in, Mr. President. Fight hard.”
Another Trump ally, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, said on the same show that it was too early to call an election.
“What we need in the presidential race is to make sure that every legal vote is counted, that every recount is completed and that every legal challenge is heard,” McCarthy said.
In a victory speech in Wilmington on Saturday, Biden vowed “not to divide but to unify,” and directly approached Trump supporters, stating that “they are not our enemies, they are Americans.”
“Let’s give ourselves a chance,” he said, urging the country to “lower the temperature.”
“Let this grim era of demonetization in America begin to end, here and now,” Biden said.
While only a handful of Republicans have congratulated Biden, the leaders of Britain, Germany, France and other European countries have extended their congratulations, along with India, Japan and other Asian countries.
