Biden dismisses concerns on transition Trump resistance decried by others
WILMINGTON, Del. — Vowing “to get right to work,” former Vice President Joe Biden, the projected election winner, on Tuesday shrugged off P resident Donald Trump’s re f usal to concede the election as “inconsequential,” even as Democrats elsewhere warned that the Republican president’s actions were dangerous.
Raising allegations of voter fraud, the Trump administration has blocked
Biden from receiving intelligence briefings and withheld federal funding intended to help facilitate the transfer of power. Trump’s resistance, backed by senior Republicans, also could prevent background investigations and security clearances for prospective staff members and access to federal agencies to discuss transition planning.
As some Democrats and former Republican officials warned of serious consequences, Biden sought to lower the national temperature as he addressed reporters from a makeshift transition headquarters near his home in downtown Wilmington.
He described Trump’s position as little more than an “embarrassing” mark on the president’s legacy, while predicting that Republicans on Capitol Hill would eventually accept the reality of Biden’s victory. The Republican resistance, Biden said, “does not change the dynamic at all in what we’re able to do.”
Additional intelligence briefings “would be useful,” Biden added, but “we don’t see anything slowing us down.”
The comments came as Trump again raised allegations of “massive ballot counting abuse” and predicted he would ultimately win the race. His allies on Capitol Hill, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have backed the president’s arguments. Trump’s tweets were swiftly flagged by the social media site as disputed claims about election fraud.
Meanwhile, Biden tried to stay focused on health care in the midst of the worst health crisis in more than a century. One of Biden’s chief coronavirus advisers, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, briefed Senate Democrats on Tuesday by phone at their weekly virtual lunch.
The closed meeting marked the first time a Biden transition official has addressed the Democrats’ Senate caucus since last week’s election.
For now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are showing no desire to cooperate with a Biden administration.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday predicted there would be a smooth transition — to another four years of Trump in power.
Pompeo’s comments came in response to a question about whether the State Department was prepared to engage with the Biden team.
“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo said with a chuckle, before shifting to a more serious tone. “We’re ready. The world is watching what’s taking place here. We’re going to count all the votes. When the process is complete, there will be electors selected. There’s a process; the Constitution lays it out pretty clearly.”
Later, in an interview with conservative radio host Tony Perkins, Pompeo appeared to seek to clarify his comments.
“Our adversaries should know that we’re ready, we’re continuing to work; we’ll work all the way through January. And then on Jan. 20, we’ll have a transition, whether it’s to a Trump administration — a second Trump administration as I spoke about today — or to an administration led by former Vice President Biden,” he said.
McConnell said Tuesday that there’s “no reason for alarm” as Trump mounts legal challenges to Biden’s election.
“It’s not unusual, should not be alarming,” McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. “At some point here we’ll find out, finally, who was certified in each of these states, and the Electoral College will determine the winner. … No reason for alarm.”
Democrats said McConnell and Republicans in Congress are so afraid of Trump that they are willing to risk the nation’s tradition of an orderly transition.
Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer said the president is “undermining faith in our elections.”
TRANSITION DELAY
Biden, meanwhile, spent much of Tuesday working alongside Sen. Kamala Harris, his pick for vice president, at a theater near his home in downtown Wilmington. He is expected to quickly name a chief of staff and start considering Cabinet appointments, though those likely won’t be finalized for weeks.
Republicans are increasingly looking to a December deadline to publicly accept the election result, giving Trump time and space to exhaust his legal challenges. That’s when the states face a deadline to certify results and a Dec. 14 deadline for the Electoral College to cast its votes. It’s also roughly the same amount of time it took to resolve the 2000 election dispute between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
Senior officials in the George W. Bush administration warned, however, that the delay after the 2000 contest caused problems.
Specifically, Biden’s team is calling on the General Services Administration, led by a Trump-appointed administrator, Emily Murphy, to formally recognize Biden’s victory. Until that happens, Biden will not receive comprehensive security briefings, transition funding or the ability to communicate with agencies to begin coordinating the transfer of power.
“Administrator Murphy’s refusal to ascertain President-elect Biden’s victory in the 2020 election puts American lives at risk,” said Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat who led the Obama administration’s transition at the Commerce Department.
Former Republican officials agreed.
“Our adversaries aren’t waiting for the transition to take place,” said former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., insisting that Biden should begin receiving the president’s daily briefing immediately. “This isn’t about politics; this is about national security.”
Biden, meanwhile, didn’t express worry.
He answered several questions during his first news briefing after declaring victory, almost all of them focused on the Republican Party’s refusal to acknowledge a Biden victory.
“I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly,” he said.
WORLD LEADERS
Separately, Biden held a 2025 minute phone call with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday, in which the two men outlined their priorities on defense, trade and climate change.
The conversation was Biden’s second official call to a national leader since the election, after speaking to Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Biden also spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday.
In an emailed statement on the call, Johnson’s office said he invited Biden to the COP26 climate summit taking place in Scotland next year.
“They discussed the close and long-standing relationship between our countries and committed to building on this partnership in the years ahead, in areas such as trade and security — including through NATO,” a U.K. government spokesman said.
A French official said that Macron congratulated Biden and Harris on their election victory and assured them of his willingness to work with the U.S. on climate, health, fighting terrorism, and defending fundamental rights. Merkel told Biden that she hopes for a close and trusting relationship with the U.S., and the two leaders agreed that trans-Atlantic cooperation is of great importance, her spokesman said.
Also Tuesday, according to the Kyodo news agency, Japanese land minister Kazuyoshi Akaba tweeted: “A sitting president making accusations of election fraud and insisting he will ‘never give up.’ Am I the only one seeing this and thinking, what kind of dictatorship is this?”
“Where has our role model for democracy gone?” Akaba asked. But he soon deleted the remarks.
Akaba later told reporters that he removed the tweet because he did not want to be “misinterpreted,” adding that he felt “saddened by the division being caused by the election,” and that he had viewed the United States as a “frontrunner of democracy.”
While some foreign governments, including major nations like China and Russia, have refrained from congratulating Biden, few have suggested that Trump won the vote.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa prematurely congratulated the incumbent last week but has since somewhat softened his position, saying Sunday that he had always worked closely with Washington, “no matter which party the U.S. president was from.”
Information for this article was contributed by Steve Peoples, Will Weissert, Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro, Alexandra Jaffe, Deb Reichmann and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press; by Tim Ross of Bloomberg News; and by Adam Taylor and Amanda Coletta of The Washington Post.