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Republicans back Trump challenge to Biden election victory
Donald Trump’s resolve not to accept the result of the presidential election appeared unshaken on Sunday, as he continued to promote conspiracy theories about the vote, with little outward sign that anyone in his inner circle was prepared to talk him into conceding.
CNN cited White House sources saying that the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had broached the subject of concession, and that his wife, Melania, was also advising that “the time had come for him to accept the loss”. But other outlets shot down CNN’s reports, even as the first lady tweeted in support of her husband.
Trump continued to tweet false claims that the election had been stolen, and the only public statements from those close to him were adamantly in favour of staying.
Top Republicans either amplified Trump’s baseless claims of widespread vote rigging or remained silent, with only a tiny number of moderates following tradition and congratulating Joe Biden.
“Keep fighting for every legal and live vote,” South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the president, advised him on Fox Business, pointing to a variety of legal challenges Trump’s lawyers were planning to launch on Monday.
“If we don’t fight back in 2020, we’re never going to win again presidentially. There is a lot at stake here.”
Legal challenges are routine in the aftermath of an election, as are recounts where margins are small. There will be a recount in Georgia. But there is no modern precedent for such processes leading to major changes in the results. International and US observers, and Republican state officials, have said there is no evidence of widespread irregularities despite the challenges of holding an election at the height of a pandemic.
Even after congratulations to Biden flooded in from almost every foreign government, Republican loyalists lined up on Fox News – which has called the election for Biden – to portray the result as a media construct.
“The media is desperately trying to get everyone to coronate Joe Biden as the next president, but that’s not how it works,” Texas senator Ted Cruz said. “The media does not get to select our president. The American people get to elect our president.
“I believe President Trump still has a path to victory and that path is to count every single legal vote that was cast, but also not to count any votes that were fraudulently cast.”
A statement from former Republican president George W Bush issued on Sunday said: “I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night. I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice-presidency.
“Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country. The president-elect reiterated that while he ran as a Democrat, he will govern for all Americans.”
Only two Republican senators have so far sent their congratulations to the president elect: former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. She said honouring Americans’ choice “in who leads us has always defined us and is the source of our exceptionalism. We must uphold that legacy.”
Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Romney referred to Biden as “president-elect”, something other Republicans have avoided. But he said he was not even going to try to talk Trump down from his insistence that he won the election.
“You’re not going to change the nature of President Trump in these last days, apparently, of his presidency. He is who he is and he has a relatively relaxed relationship with the truth, and so he’s going to keep on fighting until the very end.”
However, Romney acknowledged the harm the president’s obduracy was doing.
“Look, I know the eyes of the world are on us. The eyes of our own people are on the institutions that we have. The eyes of history are on us,” the Utah senator said.
Most Republican members of Congress remained silent on the question of the president’s concession, well aware that even after Trump leaves the White House, he and his supporters could unleash their wrath anyone seen as disloyal. More - in US Politics
Who will tell Trump to go? Not Melania or Jared, reports say
As Donald Trump spent Sunday morning visiting one of his golf clubs and doubling down on bogus election fraud claims, conflicting reports emerged about whether the president’s family and top advisers were advising him to admit defeat.
The disparate reports likely reflected a White House in deep turmoil, some officials digesting the scale of their defeat in the presidential election but others, especially Trump himself, cling to a false narrative that the election was somehow stolen.
Citing two sources, CNN reported that Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, had spoken to him about conceding. Another source told CNN Trump’s wife, Melania, told him that it was time to accept Joe Biden’s victory.
Melania Trump was then yet to make a public statement on the election but had reportedly voiced her opinion in private.
“She has offered it, as she often does,” CNN reported this source as saying.
Later on Sunday she tweeted support for her husband, saying: “The American people deserve fair elections. Every legal – not illegal – vote should be counted.”
Shortly after noon, the New York Times said a White House official disputed CNN’s reporting on Kushner. This official claimed that Kushner had advised Trump to seek “legal remedies”.
Axios also reported on Kushner’s counsel. “A second source close to Kushner confirmed he had not advised Trump to concede,” the news site said.
Any advice would appear to have had little impact on Trump himself, who continued to tweet false and baseless allegations of electoral fraud and had yet to call Biden to concede the race, a longstanding tradition in US politics. There was little sign that the president’s two oldest sons, Eric and Don Jr, were advising him to concede.
Both the Times and Axios described behind-the-scenes conversations.
According to the Times, White House advisers and staffers convened on Saturday at Trump campaign headquarters. After campaign officials explained that any legal strategy likely would not change election results, Kushner asked some to explain this to Trump. When they asked Kushner if he should also be part of this conversation, Kushner reportedly said he would participate in subsequent discussions.
According to Axios, a source claimed there were some uncomfortable conversations in Trump’s circle, and that the majority accepted that Biden had won.
A spokeswoman for Melania Trump did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has emphatically pushed for legal intervention. CNN also reported that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who tested positive for Covid-19 this week, had discussed next moves with Trump’s legal team.
Regardless of Trump’s view of the outcome, there has been no communication between the White House and Biden’s camp.
Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders told CNN’s State of the Union that while “a number of Republicans from the Hill have reached out … I don’t believe anyone from the White House has.” More - in US Politics
Joe Biden gets to work as president-elect while Trump refuses to concede
Joe Biden spent his first full day as US president-elect determined to hit the ground running, as he faces one of the most daunting challenges of any new occupant of the White House.
The Democrat, who defeated Donald Trump to win election as the 46th president, immediately began work on what is likely to be a turbulent transition as he confronts the fast-spreading coronavirus, high unemployment, systemic racism, the climate crisis and a bitterly divided nation.
Yet even as the silent machinery of a transfer of power kicked inexorably into gear, Trump still refused to concede defeat, insisting he would press ahead with legal challenges from Monday. There is no evidence of widespread election irregularities. On Sunday, former president George W Bush joined those recognising Biden as the winner.
Biden, a 77-year-old former US senator from Delaware who was vice-president to Barack Obama, was declared the victor of a closely fought and divisive pandemic-era election on Saturday morning, triggering euphoria in major cities as people honked car horns, danced in the streets and turned Trump’s TV catchphrase against him: “You’re fired!”
It was also hailed by observers around the world as a return to political orthodoxy after the disruptive experiment represented by aggressive “America first” nationalism and administrative chaos during Trump’s four-year presidency.
In an outdoor victory speech to hundreds of supporters in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden struck a starkly different note, stating: “I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify.”
He added: “This is the time to heal in America.”
The vice-president-elect, the California senator Kamala Harris, wore a white suit and blouse, symbolising the women’s suffrage movement, and praised Biden’s “audacity” for choosing a woman as running mate.
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” she said.
Biden listed goals including building prosperity, securing healthcare, achieving racial justice and saving the climate. But he said his first priority would be controlling Covid-19 with a plan “built on a bedrock of science … to turn this pandemic around”.
Even as the nation was gripped by the election, the virus soared to record highs with an average of more than 100,000 cases per day. On Monday Biden will announce his own Covid-19 task force. His transition effort has a website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter account, @Transition46. But it is unclear what, if any, cooperation he can expect from the outgoing Trump administration. More - in US Politics
The rotten state of American politics made Trump smell fresh | Nesrine Malik
This weekend there have been spontaneous parties on the streets of American cities after TV networks finally called the election for Joe Biden. From New York to Houston, Louisville to Minneapolis, liberals came out to celebrate a moment they had been expecting for four long years: Donald Trump had finally run out of road. The spell was broken. The penny had dropped.The US has certainly earned a moment of relief and celebration, but Trump’s toxic presence has not yet been eliminated. In the end, the result was not as close as it first appeared in those nervy early hours on Wednesday morning, and yet more than 70 million Americans picked the incumbent – more than Hillary Clinton managed while winning the popular vote in 2016.In the week before election day, there was a widespread hope that the result would repudiate both Trump and Trumpism. Nobody expected his hardcore base to defect, but there was reason to believe that voters who picked Trump over Clinton might reconsider their choice after seeing his disastrous mishandling of the pandemic, his innumerable legal and ethical violations, his flagrant disregard for the rituals of high office. Pundits put the spotlight on this hypothetical contingent of disgusted voters, and forecast a mass decamping triggered by Trump’s putrid character. The Republican political strategist Sarah Longwell last month reported that Trump was finally losing suburban white women, because, “what they saw was somebody who was constantly interrupting and yelling and seemed, you know, to be candid, kind of maniacal”.It didn’t happen. Trump added almost 8 million votes to his 2016 tally. According to exit polls and preliminary analyses of the vote, he looks to have improved his showing among Asians, black Americans, Latinos, Muslims, and even those white women we were constantly told were put off by his sexism and aggression. If voting for Trump was truly a test of America’s moral standards, the country has failed.So what can we say about the voters who stuck with Trump? First of all, this was no reluctant nose-holding: it no longer makes sense to say people voted for Trump “in spite of” his worst qualities, those are clearly a major part of the appeal. It may be comforting to imagine that “populism” involves charismatic politicians who promise the world to the desperate and the gullible. It is bracing to realise instead that in a democracy, Trumpish figures – who scandalise the establishment and gleefully violate its norms – will always emerge when the acceptable range of ideas and policies gets too narrow. At that point, it is only a matter of time before an outside challenge to the settled bipartisan consensus starts to look very attractive, even thrillingly subversive. There will always be an opening in the market for politicians who promise to make politics political again.And so as long as the Democrats shy away from the redistributive action needed to tackle glaring inequalities in a country where the gap between richest and poorest has more than doubled in the past two decades, there will be an opening for the Trumpist right to present itself as the solution to a broken system – the alternative to Biden and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell.Trump’s economic policies overwhelmingly benefited the richest Americans, but until the pandemic took its toll, he continued to lead Biden on the issue; according to preliminary exit polls, voters who named the economy as a top priority went overwhelmingly for Trump. This is a triumph of messaging, not policy. But Americans are still hugely dissatisfied with the state of their country, and Biden’s own message of change needs to be louder and sharper – or another Trump will be along shortly. Last year, Biden got in trouble for reassuring a group of wealthy donors that while America’s obscene income inequality needed mending because it “ferments political discord and basic revolution”, they could rest easy because under his watch, “nobody had to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”We can celebrate people of colour and women and even “middle-class Joe” riding the Amtrak train all the way to the highest office in the land, and that is not nothing. But if nothing needs to “fundamentally change”, these are just rhetorical ornaments on the same old slick centre ground. And the next big challenge to that racially diverse centre will find plenty of popular support, even if it still comes from Trump and his disciples, who will not go quietly from the US’s noisy cable networks.In fact, it was only the rotting complacency of mainstream American politics that made Trump smell refreshing. In a world without blatant voter suppression and disenfranchisement, there might be more concern for Trump’s criminality. In a world where campaigns didn’t pit millionaires against billionaires, where it was not a risky proposition to speak honestly of the country’s glaring structural inequalities, voters might not have thought Trump’s crude insults made him “straight talking”.These clues were there all along. Longwell, who highlighted Trump’s declining appeal among suburban women, also reported that her research found these same voters losing trust in both the media and political institutions. “They sort of throw their hands up a lot and say, I just don’t know what to believe,” Longwell told NPR. “There’s just this sort of total collapse of faith in anything.”Into that stagnant bog, Trump came to stir the muck. His incoherence was seen as a kind of unpractised honesty; his ignorance as a mark of accessibility; his vileness as a sign of his fighting spirit. He wasn’t nice, but he was going to shake things up.The shock of 2016 and the trauma of the past four years has intensified a belated anxiety about the crumbling state of American democracy; it has raised an alarm that is decades overdue. Too many voters looked at Trump and did not see a wicked man, they saw a man willing to break the rules of a broken system. For as long as that doesn’t fundamentally change, there is more wickedness in store.• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More
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'She's made us proud': Kamala Harris's ancestral village celebrates election win – video
The small Indian village of Thulasendrapuram burst into celebration after waking up to the news that Kamala Harris will become the first woman and the first person of south-Asian descent to become US vice-president. People set off firecrackers, played music and shared food in the village, where Harris’s maternal grandfather was born. ‘We take immense pride in her victory, and who she has become,’ said one resident
Kamala Harris: joy in south India at victory for ‘daughter of our village’
The meaning of Kamala Harris: the woman who will break new ground as vice-president More - in US Politics
Biden will put the US back on the world stage, and Britain must stand with him | Keir Starmer
Britain’s special relationship with the US was forged on the battlefields of Europe. At this year’s Remembrance Sunday, we remembered how we came together, not just as two nations with shared interests, but as friends, brothers and sisters to liberate Europe, defend freedom and defeat fascism.Like any close relationship, we’ve had our disagreements, tensions and arguments. But the values we fought for 75 years ago – liberty, cooperation, democracy and the rule of law – remain as important today as they did then. The victory of President-elect Biden presents a chance to reset that partnership and to tackle the new challenges the world faces today.The eyes of the world have been on the US in recent days – to see which direction its people would choose. In electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the American people have voted for a better, more optimistic future: for unity over division, hope over fear and integrity over dishonesty.The new president has promised to restore the US’s alliances and fill the void in global leadership. Britain should welcome this. The two biggest issues facing us all – defeating coronavirus and tackling the climate crisis – require a joined-up, global effort that has been sorely lacking in recent years.This election also had stark lessons for those of us who want to see progressive values triumph over the forces of division and despair. The Democrats’ path to victory was paved by a broad coalition, including many of the states and communities that four years ago turned away from them.To win back the trust of voters takes time. It takes political leaders who listen, learn and renew. Biden spoke to the soul of the nation, with a focus on who people are and what they value: family, community and security. One election victory does not mean that work is now finished for the Democrats; for us in the Labour party, it is only just beginning.It is crucial that the British government seizes this moment. Britain is forging a new path for its future outside the European Union. I believe we can succeed and thrive, but to do so we must be a part of the change that is coming. That requires hard work and leadership.It means working with other countries to ensure the global success and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine. It means building a more resilient, focused and effective response to the security threats posed by our adversaries. It means leading the global response to tackling climate breakdown, starting with next year’s Cop26 climate summit.I want us to be striking the best possible trade deals for Britain, which help to create jobs, grow our industries and protect our standards. That must start with us getting a trade agreement with the European Union by the end of the year, as was promised. It also means being a country that abides by the rule of the law.We will soon have a president in the Oval Office who has been a passionate advocate for the preservation of the Good Friday agreement. He, like governments across the world, will take a dim view if our prime minister ploughs ahead with proposals to undermine that agreement. If the government is serious about a reset in its relationship with the US, then it should take an early first step and drop these proposals.Equally, when our allies are wrong, Britain should be prepared to speak out and say so. We are at our best when the world knows we have the courage of our convictions and a clear moral purpose. That we are standing up for our beliefs and our shared values. In recent years, this has been absent. For the United States of America and for Britain, this is the time to return to the world stage. This is the time for us to lead.• Keir Starmer is leader of the Labour party and MP for Holborn and St Pancras More
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Can Biden and Harris put a bitterly divided America back together again?
The end of the Trump era will in theory look like this. At midday on Wednesday 21 January, Joe Biden will stand on the west front of the United States Capitol, place his left hand on a Bible, raise his right and utter 35 words: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.”
With that oath of office Biden will become the 46th president and power will drain from his predecessor, who will become a common citizen, an ex-president, number 45, no longer commander-in-chief, head of state or Oval Office occupier. The moment will thrum with pomp and pageantry. There will be drums, a bugle, the Hail to the Chief anthem and a 21-gun salute. A polished choreography, originating from George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, to symbolise the continuity of democratic rule and the peaceful transition of power.
Of course, this assumes that, despite Donald Trump challenging the results of last week’s election, Biden and Kamala Harris will be able to take office the conventional way. If that happens, millions of viewers around the world will celebrate and a socially distanced crowd on the National Mall will cheer the end of what they consider a four-year nightmare.
And then an urgent question will crystallise: can Biden and Harris put America back together? Can they end an era of hyper-polarisation and economic inequality that has degraded democracy and turned Americans against each other; that has shredded the idea of America?
“Many Republicans and Democrats believe the other side isn’t just mistaken but evil,” says John Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College political scientist. Cultural, ethnic, geographic and racial divisions underpin party affiliations as never before, producing ideological polarisation in Congress not seen since the civil war. More
