Winner Biden picks his team as Trump continues to cry foul
JOE BIDEN has been busy preparing to take over at the White House, while Donald Trump still refuses to accept that he will be moving out.
The president-elect, who is due to assume power on January 20, has named his long-time adviser Ronald Klain as his chief of staff. The aide served as Barack Obama’s ‘ebola tsar’ in 2014 during an outbreak of the virus in west Africa, and was an adviser to Bill Clinton’s vice-president Al Gore.
‘His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again,’ Mr Biden said. Mr Klain tweeted he was honoured and said he would ‘give my all’. Mr Biden received congratulations from world leaders including Boris Johnson after it became clear that he had passed the winning post in last week’s election.
But Mr Trump has not conceded and his Republican party has been filing more legal challenges, alleging electoral fraud in battleground states. Claims include that postal votes were cast in the names of dead people and even pets – but officials are adamant that there is no evidence to back up the accusations. Mr Trump has made few appearances outside the White House since Mr Biden’s victory was declared on Saturday. He has been to play golf twice and attended a Veterans Day event at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Wednesday.
While behind closed doors he has been busy online – declaring himself the rightful winner and accusing the Democrats of cheating. Twitter has concealed his barrage of messages from view after flagging them as misleading.
Just under 80 per cent of Americans believe Mr Biden’s win was legitimate, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows.