Thu 26 November 2020:
Joe Biden said Wednesday that Americans “won’t stand” for attempts to derail the U.S. election outcome, but Donald Trump doubled down on his unprecedented refusal to concede defeat and called for the results to be overturned.
In a speech on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, Biden said in his hometown Delaware that Americans “have full and fair and free elections, and then we honor the results.” “The people of this nation and the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else,” he said.
The Democrat’s statement signaled a hardening line against Trump who for more than three weeks has been touting conspiracy theories, with no meaningful evidence, that Biden stole victory on November 3.
Trump dug his heels in, though.
“We have to turn the election over,” he told Republican supporters in Pennsylvania.
Trump had been due earlier to appear in person at the Republican meeting, which took place near the Civil War battlefield site of Gettysburg. He cancelled at the last minute.
The gathering, which also featured Trump’s controversial personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was falsely portrayed by the president on Twitter as a “very important Pennsylvania State Senate hearing.” It was in fact held in a hotel in the small town and, rather than an official hearing, was merely a forum for Trump’s ardent supporters to push his evidence-free claims.
Biden won Pennsylvania by a margin of 80,000 votes on November 3, helping him assemble a convincing nationwide victory and making Trump a one-term president.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has informed staff that the transition process has begun and a team had been assigned inside the agency to support a handover to the incoming Biden administration, according to an internal email seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
The guidelines, sent on Wednesday, came after the General Services Administration (GSA), the federal agency that must sign off on presidential transitions, notified Biden on Monday that he could formally begin the transition process.
Trump’s next presidential run?
Trump, who tore up countless norms during his four years in power, is carving out new territory with his refusal to concede to Biden.
Supporters suggest he is already eying an announcement of running for president again in 2024.
Building his brand ahead of a new campaign might be one explanation for the real estate tycoon’s dogged pursuit of such a lost cause.
Trump has yet to take even the simplest steps in normal post-election protocol, starting with a phone call to Biden.
“No, I have not heard anything from President Trump,” Biden told NBC News.
Given Trump’s threats before the election not to recognise the results, Biden told NBC he is “not surprised by the response of the president.”
Since the election, Trump has largely disappeared from his usual work schedule and has not once taken questions from journalists.
