McConnell calls Biden president-elect as growing list of Republicans ‘face the music’
More Republicans have recognized President-elect Joe Biden as the nation’s next commander-in-chief after the Electoral College voted Monday to certify his victory over President Donald Trump.
Electors met across the country Monday to cast their votes for president. Biden was affirmed the winner of the presidential election after California’s 55 electoral votes pushed him over the 270-vote threshold needed to win around 5:30 p.m. ET, The New York Times reports.
Biden received 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232 after voting wrapped up around 7 p.m.
The Associated Press and other news outlets projected Biden the winner of the election on Nov. 7. He and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will take office on Jan. 20, 2021.
Trump, however, has refused to concede to Biden as he and his allies continue to push baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in an effort to challenge the outcome of the election. Additionally, many Republican lawmakers haven’t accepted Biden as the president-elect.
But following the Electoral College vote, more GOP leaders have recognized him as the winner.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did so for the first time on the Senate floor Tuesday morning.
“Six weeks ago, Americans voted in this year’s general election,” he said. “The legal and constitutional processes have continued to play out since then. Yesterday electors met in all 50 states. So as of this morning, our country has officially and president-elect and a vice president-elect.”
“At some point you have to face the music,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said, according to The AP. “Once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it’s time for everybody to move on.”
Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, who oversees the Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said Monday he would work with Biden’s team.
“While the electoral process moves toward a final conclusion, planning for the Inaugural Ceremonies at the Capitol must continue,” Blunt told the Kansas City Star. “I will, as Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, work with President-elect Biden and his Presidential Inaugural Committee to plan for the swearing-in ceremony on January 20.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina told reporters Trump has a “very, very narrow path” in challenging the outcome of the election, according to Roll Call.
“I don’t see how he gets there from here,” he said.
Some Republicans, however, were more reluctant to call Biden the president-elect.
“Well it seems to me that being elected by the Electoral College is a threshold where a title like that is probably most appropriate and it’s, I suppose you can say official, if there is such a thing as official president-elect, or anything else-elect,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, told reporters.
Sen. John Cornyn from Texas said Biden is on a “path to victory” barring further legal challenges.
“That’s sort of the nature of these elections,” Cornyn said, according to The AP. “You got to have a winner. You got to have a loser.”
When asked if he recognizes Biden as the president-elect, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the president pro tempore of the Senate, said “I don’t have to. The Constitution does,” according to CNN.
Other Republicans have remained silent on Biden’s victory while others still refuse to call him president-elect, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, CNN reports.
During a speech after the Electoral College vote Monday, Biden called continued efforts to overturn the results of the election an “unprecedented assault on our Democracy.”
“We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact,” he said. “And now it’s time to turn the page as we’ve done throughout our history — to unite, to heal.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 10:02 AM.
