The frightening reality check lawmakers and the public got on Jan. 6 is likely to make things a bit easier for the incoming president.
IT WAS, PRESIDENT-ELECT Joe Biden said solemnly, “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation,” a day when pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol and occupied the chamber where both defenders and detractors of the president found themselves jointly threatened by a marauding mob.
But if that day was a low point in a tumultuous five years of a campaign and presidency that served to further divide an already partisan Congress, it may also have been just the jolt lawmakers needed to remember why they were sent to Washington in the first place.
Republicans who just hours before had been defiantly challenging an Electoral College vote count to make Biden the next president backed down, looking shell-shocked as they said this was no longer the best way to go. Trump’s golf pal, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called on his colleagues to accept the election results and on Thursday tweeted laudatory comments about Biden’s response to what lawmakers called an attempted coup. Continue reading.