Transition delay hurts effort to fight pandemic, Biden team says
U.S. president-elect’s staff remain cut off from key government experts
WASHINGTON — With U.S. President Trump still balking at conceding electoral defeat and public health experts forecasting a horrific new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, calls intensified Sunday for the start of a formal transition to the administration of president-elect Joe Biden.
The countrywide virus caseload last week touched unprecedented heights of more than 180,000 new daily infections, and Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said the president-elect’s team urgently needed to begin co-ordinating with experts inside the government.
“Joe Biden’s going to become president of the United States in the midst of an ongoing crisis,” Klain said on NBC’S “Meet the Press,” citing the necessity of preparations to widely distribute a vaccine beginning early next year. “There are people at (the Department of Health and Human Services) making plans to implement that vaccine,” said Klain. “Our experts need to talk to those people as soon as possible, so nothing drops in this change of power we’re going to have on Jan. 20.”
The Biden team remains cut off from key government experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease specialist, who has frequently drawn Trump’s ire with frank assessments of the pandemic’s threat.
Asked on CNN’S “State of the Union” whether it was important to begin working with the incoming administration as soon as possible, Fauci re
sponded: “Yes, of course … That is obvious.”
Trump, who travelled Sunday to his Virginia golf property, again tweeted about baseless claims of widespread election fraud, including one tweet in which he appeared to acknowledge his loss for the first time. “He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump wrote.
Less than two hours later, he sent a followup tweet, declaring that his rival “only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA” and adding: “I concede NOTHING!”
Biden’s inner circle has expressed exasperation over the continuing delays in the formal start of the transition, which provides the incoming administration with access to federal funds and an array of logistical assistance, such as State Department help in arranging contacts with foreign leaders.
“Donald Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden president or not president,” Klain said in his NBC interview. “The American people did that.”
Some of Biden’s allies have taken a harsher tone in public comments about Trump’s refusal to concede the race in the face of mathematical clarity about the result, saying he is undermining confidence in democracy itself.
Sen. Bernie Sanders said the president needed to “man up” and stop misleading his backers about the vote’s integrity. On Saturday, with thousands of Trump supporters marching in Washington and loudly declaring their refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win, the president — unmasked, with the Secret Service in tow — took a motorcade ride to greet them.
“The idea that he continues to tell his supporters that the only
reason he may have lost this election is because of fraud is an absolutely disgraceful, unAmerican thing to do,” Sanders said on CNN.
The formal start of the presidential transition process is triggered only once the head of the General Services Administration “ascertains” the election result. A hitherto obscure Trump appointee, Emily Murphy, has so far blocked that step.
Klain said “what we really want to see this week” is for the ascertainment to be issued.
Fauci said on CNN that it was possible that the death toll, already approaching a quarter of a million, could rise by another 200,000 before a vaccine became widely available. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer last week reported successful clinical trials for a vaccine it developed, and others are in the pipeline as well.