BIDEN BEGINS TRANSITION
Trump refuses to admit defeat as Biden prepares to move into White House
UNITED States President-elect Joe Biden took the first steps on Sunday towards moving into the White House in 73 days, as Donald Trump again refused to admit defeat and tried to sow doubt about the election results.
With congratulations pouring in from world leaders and supporters nursing hangovers after a night of celebrations, Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris announced they would receive a joint briefing yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware, from their transition Covid-19 advisory team.
Biden would then deliver remarks on coronavirus and economic recovery.
They also launched a transition website, BuildBackBetter.com, and a Twitter feed, @Transition46.
Meanwhile, Trump played golf at his course near Washington, the same place where he was on Saturday when news broke that Biden had secured enough Electoral College votes for victory.
“Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be?” Trump complained in a tweet on Sunday.
Trump planned to file lawsuits in the coming week, said his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who also said he had “a lot of evidence” of fraud.
But former president George W. Bush said the “outcome is clear” and added that he had called Biden and Harris to extend his congratulations.
Bush said “the American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair. We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future.”
Biden’s transition website lists four priorities: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change.
“The team being assembled will meet these challenges on Day One,” it said in a reference to Jan 20, when Biden would be sworn in as the 46th president of the US.
Biden, who turns 78 on Nov 20, is the oldest person ever elected to the White House. Harris, 56, a senator from California, is the first woman, first Black person and first South Asian person to be elected vice-president.
Biden plans to name a task force yesterday to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 237,000 people dead in the US and is surging across the country.
He has also announced plans to rejoin the Paris climate accord and will reportedly issue an executive order on his first day in office reversing Trump’s travel ban on mostly Muslim countries.
Biden has vowed to name a cabinet that reflects the diversity of the country, although he might have trouble gaining approval for more progressive appointees if Republicans retain control of the Senate, an outcome that will depend on two run-off races in Georgia in January.
Biden, who after John F. Kennedy is just the second Catholic to be elected US president, attended church on Sunday morning in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
He also visited the graves of his son, Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and his first wife and daughter, who died in a 1972 car accident.
The Trump campaign has mounted legal challenges to the results in several states, but no evidence has emerged of any widespread irregularities that would affect the results.
Giuliani told the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures that Trump’s team would file a lawsuit in Pennsylvania yesterday against officials “for violating civil rights, for conducting an unfair election (and) for violating the law of the state”.