Category: Joe Biden

As Biden wins presidency, Trump supporters insist election isn’t over as they protest his loss

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PHOENIX — Activists and supporters of President Trump insisted Saturday that the presidential election was not finished, displaying defiance after Joe Biden secured victory in the closely fought race.

From here in the Arizona desert to Philadelphia, Trump backers echoed the president’s attacks on the integrity of the election, which continued Saturday with his statement that “this election is far from over.” They made baseless allegations of voter fraud and pledged to keep fighting in court while claiming Biden did not legitimately win. 

“We know the election is being stolen,” said Michael Breitenbach, a 47-year-old construction manager in Philadelphia who was holding a Trump flag Saturday morning not long after news outlets called the race. “When the count is fair and legal, Donald Trump will have won by a landslide, and you can bank on that.” Continue reading.

Biden: “This is the time to heal in America”

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President-elect Joe Biden said “this is the time to heal in America” and called on the nation to come together to get the coronavirus under control, address systemic racism, confront climate change and “restore decency.”

Driving the news: Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris addressed the nation Saturday night at a drive-in style rally in Wilmington, Del., hours after news networks projected Biden as the winner of the U.S. presidential election.

  • The milestone comes exactly 48 years after Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate. Continue reading.

Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies

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President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country’s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.

He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.

Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden — from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order — will be among the most startling in American history. Continue reading.

For Joe Biden, unassuming opposite of Trump, victory means a title that has eluded him for three decades: President-elect

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Joe Biden, the son of a car salesman and a homemaker, the product of Catholic schools and public universities, the six-term senator and two-term vice president, has craved one title above all others in decades of trying and decades of failing. On Saturday, he won it: president-elect.

The man who was wrong for the moment in two previous presidential campaigns had enough longevity to convince voters that he was right for this one. And now the man who was once one of the nation’s youngest senators will become the nation’s oldest president.

Draping himself and his campaign in basic attributes such as decency and empathy to try to salve a country shattered by a viral pandemic and economic collapse, Biden used a deliberately laid-back approach to slay the reelection hopes of a man he believed threatened the fabric of American democracy. Continue reading.

How Trump’s erratic behavior and failure on coronavirus doomed his reelection

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The same impulses that helped lift the president to
victory in 2016 contributed to his undoing four years later.

Air Force One was descending into Detroit when President Trump posed a question that would come to define his entire approach to the deadly coronavirus pandemic: “Do you think I should wear a mask?” he asked the aides and advisers gathered in the plane’s front cabin.

Trump was headed to visit a Ford Motor plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., which by May was already a coronavirus hot zone, with more than 5,000 dead,thousands more sickened — and cases still spiking — in the critical Midwest battleground state.

But the responses were nearly unanimous, with senior White House officials arguing that wearing a mask was unnecessary and would send a bad signal to the public about the magnitude of the crisis. Continue reading.

Why Republicans and others concerned about the economy have reason to celebrate Biden in the White House

On day one, a newly inaugurated President Joe Biden will have to address a devastated economy – much like he and former President Barack Obama did a decade ago. 

What can the country expect? 

Forecasting how the economy will perform under a new president is generally a fool’s errand. How much or how little credit the person in the White House deserves for the health of the economy is a matter of debate, and no economist can confidently predict how the president’s policies will play out – if they even go into effect – or what challenges might emerge.  Continue reading.

Kamala Harris, daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, elected nation’s first female vice president

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A vice president-elect stepped forward on Saturday, and, for the first time in American history, she was not a man.

Kamala Devi Harris, a daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, is set to become the highest-ranking woman in the nation’s 244-year existence, as well as a high-profile representation of the country’s increasingly diverse composition.

Harris’s victory comes 55 years after the Voting Rights Act abolished laws that disenfranchised Black Americans, 36 years after the first woman ran on a presidential ticket and four years after Democrats were devastated by the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the only woman to win the presidential nomination of a major party. Continue reading.

How Biden got across the finish line

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There were many moments in Joe Biden’s campaign when his aides thought they would never reach the finish line. 

After the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, where Biden finished a dismal fifth with just 8.4 percent of the vote.

During difficult debate nights with rival Democrats who mocked the former vice president and challenged him. And in between when they couldn’t get donors to return their calls. Continue reading.

Biden’s Team Steps Up Transition Plans, Mapping Out a White House

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With Joe Biden leading in several important battleground states, his advisers and allies have moved rapidly to discuss hiring in critical roles, especially those overseeing the coronavirus response.

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s advisers accelerated their transition planning on Friday as election results showed him with an advantage in battleground states that could hand him the presidency, with the first senior officials in a potential Biden White House possibly named as early as next week.

In Wilmington and Washington, Mr. Biden’s advisers and allies are ramping up their conversations about who might fill critical posts, both in the West Wing and across the agencies, guided heavily by Mr. Biden’s plan to assemble what would be the most diverse cabinet in history.

The behind-the-scenes activity underscored that even as Mr. Biden publicly offered a disciplined message about counting every vote and refrained from claiming victory, he was already mapping out a quick start in office as the nation faces a worsening pandemic and a damaged economy. Continue reading.

Biden received more total votes than any presidential candidate in U.S. history

As citizens anxiously wait for the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, one thing is certain: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has scored more votes than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history.

Biden eclipsed President Barack Obama’s previous popular vote record on Wednesday when he received 69.9 million votes. The former president recorded about 69 million votes during the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

President Donald Trump, on the other hand, had garnered about 67 million votes on Wednesday, the AP said. Continue reading.