Category: Joe Biden

Sharp Divisions on Vote Counts, as Biden Gets High Marks for His Post-Election Conduct

Large majority of Americans say additional COVID-19 aid is needed – and want Congress to pass it as soon as possible

More than two weeks after the presidential election, there are sharp divisions between voters who supported Joe Biden and Donald Trump over nearly all aspects of the election and voting process, including whether their own votes were counted accurately.

Trump voters, who already were skeptical of the electoral process and prospects for an accurate vote count before the election in October, have become much more so since Biden’s victory. While a 59% majority of all voters say elections in the United States were run and administered well, just 21% of Trump supporters have a positive view of how elections were administered nationally. Among Biden supporters, 94% say the elections were run and administered well.

Disagreements between supporters of the winning and losing candidates over the accuracy of presidential vote counts are not unusual, but the magnitude of the differences between Trump and Biden voters is striking. While 82% of Biden supporters are very confident their own vote was counted accurately, just 35% of Trump supporters say the same. Continue reading.

Pennsylvania certifies Biden victory

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Pennsylvania officials on Tuesday certified the commonwealth’s election results showing Joe Biden won the presidential election in the state over President Trump.

The Pennsylvania Department of State said that Secretary of State Kathy Bookvar (D) certified the results after receiving certifications from all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties certified on Monday.

Gov. Tom Wolf (D) tweeted that he “signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris” as required by law. The final vote total showed Biden ahead of Trump by 80,555 in the commonwealth. Continue reading.

GOP Governor On Trump’s Election Tantrum: Beginning To Look Like A ‘Banana Republic’

“Frankly, I’m embarrassed that more people in the party aren’t speaking up,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden and bashed Republicans who have remained silent on the matter.

Two weeks ago, Hogan appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and said he believed Trump would “do the right thing” and admit defeat. A day earlier, virtually all major media networks had projected Biden as the winner.

Asked Sunday if he still feels that way, Hogan said he wasn’t sure.

“I have confidence that on Jan. 20 the president-elect is going to be sworn in,” Hogan said. “But I’m not sure I could say that I’m confident that the president is going to do the right thing.” Continue reading.

Women set to take key roles in Biden administration

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President-elect Joe Biden is facing pressure to lean heavily on women as he fills out his Cabinet. So far, he seems intent on delivering.

Biden vowed to put an emphasis on diversity when building his team, and he has already picked women for a series of key positions.

Biden named Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his vice president, a historic choice that made her the first woman, the first Black and the first Indian American vice president-elect. Continue reading.

A vindictive Trump seeks to undermine Biden’s presidency

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It has been almost three weeks since President Trump stepped to a lectern in the White House in the early hours of Nov. 4 to declare that the election was being stolen from him. It was a fabrication designed to turn President-elect Joe Biden into an illegitimate president and has continued apace ever since. It will not stop with Biden’s swearing-in on Jan. 20.

Any thoughts Trump might have had of overturning the election were a failed enterprise from the start. On Friday, those hopes were dealt twin blows when Georgia’s secretary of state certified Biden as the winner there and Republican legislative leaders from Michigan, after meeting with the president, signaled they would do nothing to try to undermine the results. Biden has an electoral college majority, and the certification process continues to gather steam.

Through these weeks, the president and his legal team have failed to produce credible evidence of systematic or widespread fraud. Now they are resorting to wild allegations of a grand conspiracy on the part of Biden and the Democrats — charges repeatedly debunked. This effort is being led by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was once a reputable mayor of New York. These claims of fraud are in themselves a fraudulent and cynical enterprise. Continue reading.

McEnany Whines About 2016 Transition To Justify Trump’s Misconduct

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday justified Donald Trump’s refusal to concede that he lost the election by running through a list of grievances about how Democrats treated Trump in 2016.

Trump has refused to admit that he lost the 2020 election, instead tweeting debunked claims of voter fraud and election rigging. The General Services Administration, which is responsible for administering the transition to brief and prepare President-elect Joe, has refused to ascertain that Biden did indeed win the election and continues to block the transition.

The Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate in the transfer of power to the incoming administration is happening despite the increasing death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a nationwide vaccine distribution plan. Experts say the refusal to cooperate could make the virus, now surging across much of the country, even worse. Continue reading.

Minnesota GOP claims election ‘abnormalities’ without evidence

Election officials on Friday swiftly rejected claims by Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan that “extreme data abnormalities” might have influenced the state’s Nov. 3 election after her examples proved to be nothing more than instances of high voter turnout.

“The bottom line is you can’t just throw out conjecture and guesswork without real evidence,” said Risikat Adesaogun, spokeswoman for the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office. It was “hard to respond to allegations that are so vague and unformed.”

Nonpartisan election officials in Anoka and Wright counties, two main counties cited by Carnahan, said they found nothing that would call into question the integrity or validity of the vote. A Star Tribune analysis of Minnesota election data since 2000, for both presidential and gubernatorial elections, found nothing irregular about this year’s voting trends. Continue reading.

Business and World Leaders Move On as Trump Fights to Reverse Election

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President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is seizing the moment, not to aggressively confront the president he defeated, but to act presidential in his stead.

WASHINGTON — Inside the wrought-iron fences that surround the 18-acre White House complex, the 2020 election rages on, with President Trump angrily refusing to concede. But the rest of the world — and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. — is moving on.

The leaders of Western Europe have called Mr. Biden, while the world’s rising superpower, China, has congratulated him. PayPal’s chief executive extended his “warmest congratulations to President-Elect Joe Biden, who will become the 46th president of the U.S.A.” The Boeing Corporation, which benefited from Mr. Trump’s demands for big-ticket defense items, issued a statement on Friday saying, “We look forward to working with the Biden administration.”

It is as if the vast machinery of diplomacy, business and lobbying has suddenly been recalibrated for the Biden era. Mr. Trump, by far the dominant world figure for the past four years, is increasingly treated as irrelevant. Continue reading.

More conservatives break with Trump over election claims

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A growing number of conservative Republicans are breaking with President Trump and his legal team over what they view as a dangerous effort to overturn the election results by promoting conspiracy theories.

GOP lawmakers, conservative lawyers and key figures in rightwing media say it is time for his legal team to either back up their claims about fraud or concede defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.

The voices range from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) to conservative lawyers and thought leaders such as Karl Rove. Continue reading.

Republican Senate signals it will confirm Biden Cabinet

A series of GOP senators told POLITICO they’d back the president-elect’s nominees — as long as they’re “mainstream.”

Senate Republicans are signaling they will confirm most of President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks in January — a rare bright spot for a White House that may clash with a GOP majority for years to come.

Many Republicans won’t even publicly concede that Biden will be the next president while President Donald Trump fights to overturn the election results. But a critical mass of GOP senators said in interviews that Biden has the right to his Cabinet, indicating he may be able to staff his administration largely to his liking.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said that he believes a “president ought to be able to pick his or her Cabinet barring someone who is out of the mainstream of either party,” and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) gives “great latitude” to presidents to make appointments. Those two plus Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) give Biden a working majority on Cabinet picks, even if Democrats fall short in a pair of Georgia runoffs and the GOP holds a 52-48 majority. Continue reading.