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Joe Biden delivered a sharp condemnation of Donald Trump and declared that “the will of the people had prevailed” in a speech that came shortly after the electoral college officially confirmed his victory.
It was “time to turn the page” in a presidential election that tested the resilience of American democracy, the president-elect said moments after Hawaii cast the last four electoral college votes, marking a milestone that almost ended the attempt without Trump’s precedents to reverse the results.
Biden hailed the presidential election and its unexplored aftermath as a triumph of American democracy and “one of the most amazing displays of civic duty we have seen in our country.”
The final tally, 306-232 electoral votes, followed an unsubstantiated campaign by the president to reverse the results of an election that had historic turnout despite a pandemic. Trump lost not only in the electoral college, but also in the popular vote, by nearly 7 million.
Yet for weeks, the president has clung to meritless allegations of voter fraud in a number of battlefield states that brought Biden the victory. His refusal to concede has cast doubt among his supporters about the integrity of the vote and undermined faith in the institutions of the US government.
In a speech delivered from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said that “our democracy, driven, tested, threatened, proved tough, true and strong.”
Biden, who will become the 46th president of the United States when he is sworn in on January 20, continued: “We the people vote. The integrity of our choices remains intact. So now is the time to turn the page, as we have done throughout our history, to unite, to heal. “
Since Biden entered the presidential race last year, he has portrayed the election as a “battle for the soul” of the nation. In his remarks Monday night, Biden described his election college victory as a fulfillment of that mission and a rejection of Trump.
The president-elect called Trump’s attack on the democratic process “unconscionable” and attacked Republicans who accepted his unsubstantiated claims about widespread electoral fraud. He singled out the 17 state attorneys general and 126 members of Congress who he said helped legitimize a legal effort to cast tens of millions of votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia and “turn over the presidency to a candidate who lost college. electoral, lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they wanted to reverse. ”The supreme court rejected the demand.
These officials, Biden said, took a position “so extreme that we have never seen it before, a position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honor our constitution.”
Anticipating further resistance from Trump and his allies, Biden noted that the president and his campaign “were not denied any course of action” and emphasized that their efforts failed in states with Republican governors and in courts with Republican-appointed judges.
“They were heard,” he said. “And they were found to be without merit.”
However, Trump continued to dispute the legitimacy of Monday’s election, claiming that the result was “COVERED” due to “massive fraud.” Twitter moved quickly to label the pronouncements as “disputed.” As 55 California voters were voting for Biden, pushing him over the 270-vote threshold to win the White House, Trump announced on Twitter that his attorney general, Bill Barr, would resign effective Dec. 23.
Trump had recently lost patience with Barr, seen as a loyalist enthusiastically advancing the president’s political agenda, after the attorney general acknowledged that his department had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
In a sign that Republicans were increasingly willing to accept reality, some senators and members of Congress acknowledged the electoral college vote.
“The orderly transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy, and while I supported President Trump, today’s electoral college vote makes it clear that Joe Biden is now president-elect,” said Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, it’s a statement. .
Biden thanked the handful of Republican senators who have accepted the electoral college vote, after resisting his victory for weeks. Always hoping that four years of deep partisan division will usher in a new era of bipartisanship, Biden said he was “convinced that we can work together for the good of the nation.”
With the election nearing completion, he asked elected officials to dedicate themselves to the “urgent work” of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, the death toll in the United States surpassed 300,000, a gruesome reminder on the same day that Americans began receiving the first injections of a vaccine against the virus.
While the way forward remains challenging, exacerbated by persisting divisions, Biden said the electoral college vote should serve as a sign of hope for a weary nation.
He pointed to electoral officials, many of them volunteers, who carried out their duties in the face of political pressure, threats of violence and, in some cases, an intervention by the president himself. His unwavering commitment to the electoral process ensured that the “flame of democracy” did not go out, he said.
“They showed deep, unwavering faith and a commitment to the law,” Biden said. “They knew that the elections they supervised were honest, free and fair. They saw it with their own eyes and they wouldn’t be intimidated into saying something different. “
