Joe Biden said Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election was “an embarrassment”, vowing to move forward with the presidential transition despite resistance from the White House and Republican leaders.
Biden, answering questions for the first time since he was declared the winner of the 2020 election, intensified his criticism of the president, who continued to baselessly allege voter fraud, and said Trump’s denial would “not help his legacy”.
Though the situation at the White House has caused deepening alarm over whether the US would witness a smooth transfer of power that has been a hallmark of American democracy for generations, Biden promised his team was “going to get right to work” confronting the compounding crises facing the nation.
Pointing to unfounded claims of voter fraud, Trump, with the support of senior Republicans in Washington, has maintained that the election is not over and is contesting the results in several states, despite it being called for Biden on Saturday morning almost four days after the polls closed.
In a call with reporters on Monday, transition officials said the General Services Administration had yet to issue a letter of “ascertainment” that would recognize Biden as the president-elect and allow his team to begin the transfer of power.
Until the decision is made, Biden’s staff cannot meet with their counterparts in the White House and other federal agencies, begin to perform background checks for potential appointees or receive security briefings.
Biden insisted the delay “does not change the dynamic at all of what we’re able to do”. Receiving the intelligence briefings that are traditionally shared with the incoming president “would be useful,” he said, but added: “We don’t see anything slowing us down, quite frankly.”
Biden was joined by the vice-president-elect, Kamala Harris, at a theater near his home in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, where they delivered remarks after the US supreme court heard the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
The Democratic leadership have vowed to protect and expand the signature legislation from the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice-president, during the worst public health crisis in more than a century.
The US recently surpassed 10m cases of coronavirus, as most states struggled to contain outbreaks during the latest wave of infections.
“In the middle of a deadly pandemic that’s affecting more than 10 million Americans, these ideologues are once again trying to strip health coverage away from the American people,” Biden said of the Republican state officials who brought the lawsuit that has ended up before the supreme court, aiming to invalidate the healthcare law.
Democrats made healthcare a central theme of the election, and a focus of the supreme court hearing last month for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whose confirmation cemented a 6-3 conservative court.
The health coverage of millions of Americans hangs in the balance if the court rules in favor of Republicans, though Tuesday’s arguments indicated that the justices were skeptical of striking down the entire law.
“Each and every vote for Joe Biden was a statement that healthcare in America should be a right and not a privilege,” Harris said in her remarks. She added: “And Joe Biden won this election decisively.”
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
