money Biden campaigns for Georgia Senate Democrats following electoral college victory
Joe Biden was in Georgia on Tuesday campaigning for the Democrats in crucial Senate runoff elections, a day after addressing the American public for the first time as its official president-elect.
Related: Biden should get Covid vaccine soon as possible for ‘security reasons’, Fauci says
In Washington, Mitch McConnell finally acknowledged Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, who continues to make baseless claims of electoral fraud and refuse to concede.
“Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden,” the Republican majority leader said on the Senate floor, adding in reference to the California senator Kamala Harris: “All Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time.”
The White House, however, still refused to recognise Trump’s defeat. Asked about McConnell’s concession, which came after electoral college proceedings on Monday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany replied: “The president is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election. Yesterday’s vote was one step in the constitutional process.”
McEnany said she did not have a reaction to McConnell’s decision to congratulate Biden. She said: “The president, again, is pursuing ongoing litigation. I would refer you to the campaign for further.”
Asked by the Guardian if Trump intended to run for election again in 2024, the press secretary merely noted that legal action continued. She denied that such efforts were damaging US democracy, insisting without evidence that the Russia investigation into Trump caused greater harm.
Now the electoral college has voted, Trump’s hopes of overturning the result, vanishingly faint anyway after more than 50 defeats in the courts, are extinguished. Biden will be inaugurated in Washington on 20 January.
The first Democrat to win Georgia since 1992, Biden appeared in Atlanta for a drive-in rally in support of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who face Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in 5 January contests that will decide control of the Senate and with it the legislative power of Biden’s administration.
“It’s starting to feel like I won Georgia three times,” Biden said, referring to the multiple recounts that affirmed his victory after the Trump campaign challenged the results. Biden said Georgians had refused to be “bullied” or “silenced”.
The Atlanta trip was Biden’s first on the campaign trail since the election on 3 November. The drive-in rally, meant to boost Democrat turnout in multi-million-dollar contests in which early voting has begun, featured both Senate candidates, as well as the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Biden said: “Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are running to represent Georgia. Georgia! They’ll actually fight for you, represent you, stand up for you.”
Before Biden’s appearance, it emerged he had tapped Pete Buttigieg, his rival for the 2020 Democratic nomination, to lead the department of transportation, the Guardian confirmed.
The news was first reported by Reuters. No Biden transition official or Buttigieg representative has publicly confirmed the report.
Electoral college
On Monday night, Biden addressed the nation in a primetime speech to mark the electoral college verdict, almost six weeks after election day. Speaking from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden declared that “the rule of law, our constitution and the will of the people prevailed. Our democracy – pushed, tested, threatened – proved to be resilient, true and strong.”
The man who will become the 46th president said it was “time to turn the page” on an election which he proclaimed “one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we’ve ever seen in our country”. The final electoral college result of 306 to 232 was, he noted, the same as when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“At that time,” Biden said, “President Trump called the electoral college tally a landslide.”
In a 13-minute speech interrupted several times by coughing and throat clearing, Biden attacked both Trump’s attempts to overturn the result in the form of multiple recounts and legal challenges and “unconscionable” threats and abuse to which election workers and officials were subjected.
“They were heard by more than 80 judges across the country,” he said. “And in every case, no cause or evidence was found to reverse or question or dispute the results.”
Citing a Texas lawsuit rejected by the US supreme court, he said: “It’s a position so extreme, we’ve 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 honour our constitution.”
But Biden also sought to bring together a bitterly divided nation, saying it was “time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history – to unite, to heal.”
Trump shows little sign of even uniting his party. On Tuesday he retweeted a message from a conservative lawyer which said the governor and secretary of Georgia should be sent to jail.
The post included a doctored image of Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger wearing masks featuring the Chinese flag. The officials resisted verbal attacks from Trump, who demanded they reject the result of their state’s election even though multiple recounts affirmed Biden’s victory.
Biden also addressed the US death toll in the coronavirus pandemic, which has passed 300,000.
“My heart goes out to each of you in this dark winter of the pandemic,” he said, “about to spend the holidays and the new year with a black hole in your hearts”. Referencing St Francis, he tried to end with a message of hope: “For where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is darkness, light. This is who we are as a nation. This is the America we love. And that is the America we are going to be.”
On Tuesday, McConnell offered a faint echo of that appeal: “Our nation needs us to add another bipartisan chapter to this record of achievement.” The Senate majority leader appeared to be hinting at the need for a deal on coronavirus relief that has eluded Capitol Hill for months.
McConnell and other top congressional leaders – including House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy – met multiple times on Tuesday in an effort to end a months-long standoff over coronavirus relief and and finalize a funding bill in time to avert a government shutdown at the weekend, although it remained unclear if a deal would be reached.
“Now we are continuing to work. I think there is progress,” McCarthy said as he left the earlier gathering late Tuesday afternoon.
Biden told reporters he had spoken to McConnell, a notoriously ruthless partisan operator. “While we disagree on a lot of things, there are things we can work together on,” Biden said. “We agreed to get together sooner [rather] than later.”
Elsewhere, Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, said Biden and Harris should be vaccinated “as soon as we possibly can”.
“For security reasons, I really feel strongly that we should get them vaccinated as soon as we possibly can,” Fauci told ABC. “You want him fully protected as he enters into the presidency in January.”
