The high stakes election was held on November 3 against the backdrop of an unprecedented pandemic that has killed more than 2,30,000 Americans and wiped away millions of jobs.US Election 2020: A day after Joe Biden propelled past the finish line to defeat Donald Trump, the President-Elect and his team said that they were prioritising to deal with the coronavirus pandemic as cases in the country near 10 million. Biden in his victory speech, said that he would appoint a 12 member coronavirus task force on Monday to mount an effective response to the pandemic. Biden will hold a briefing on his Covid-19 plans as well his plans to revive the economy tomorrow.
President Donald Trump on the other hand continues to reject the election outcomes and is pressing hard with legal rights to challenge Biden’s projected win. Trump is now facing pressure to cooperate with President-elect’s team to ensure a smooth transfer of power when the new administration takes office in January. The General Services Administration is tasked with formally recognising Biden as president-elect, which begins the transition. But the agency’s Trump-appointed administrator, Emily Murphy, has not started the process and has given no guidance on when she will do so.
Meanwhile, congratulations poured in for Biden from across the world, including from conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, making it hard for Trump to push his unfounded claims of election fraud.
A demonstrator reads a banner on display at Black Lives Matter Plaza, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President-Elect Joe Biden on Monday is set to deliver his remarks on his plans to beat the coronavirus and bring the economy back on track. In the afternoon Biden and Kamala Harris will hold briefings with transition advisors. Trump on the other hand has no public events planned for the day.
President Donald Trump is facing pressure to cooperate with President-elect Joe Biden's team to ensure a smooth transfer of power when the new administration takes office in January. The General Services Administration is tasked with formally recognising Biden as president-elect, which begins the transition. But the agency's Trump-appointed administrator, Emily Murphy, has not started the process and has given no guidance on when she will do so.
America's national security and economic interests depend on the federal government signaling clearly and swiftly that the United States government will respect the will of the American people and engage in a smooth and peaceful transfer of power," Jen Psaki, a Biden transition aide, tweeted Sunday.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Monday that not everything would change under U.S. President-elect Joe Biden but much would get better.U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently complained that Germany has failed to raise defence spending to 2% of economic output as mandated by the NATO military alliance. Maas said he did not think that the spending target would be in focus as much under Biden as under Trump.Maas said the argument over defence spending would not end under Biden but would be conducted in a different style.
Biden is a creature of Washington, with 47 years of political experience in the American capital. Biden has never been a crusader for political causes. His defining qualities were ideological flexibility and the capacity to adapt to the changing political circumstances.Working-class roots and folksy Irish ways add to Biden’s image as an affable leader capable of finding political compromises.Those skills will now come in handy, as Biden inherits a country that is split down the middle. He is doing the right thing by being gracious and promising to unite the country by reaching out to the Republicans.
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After nearly 4 days of anxiety, Donald Trump is still insisting that the race is not over. He continues to throw baseless allegations of illegal voting and election fraud. This has brought mixed reactions from people within his camp, with some nudging Trump to concede while many of his Republican allies are giving him space to process the
“Trump has not lost,'' declared South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in an appearance on Fox News Channel. Rejecting the reality of the situation he added, “Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard.”
“He intends to fight,'' Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said as it was becoming clear that the president was headed for defeat.
Would Trump ever concede? “I doubt it,”said Trump's longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone, whose prison sentence was commuted by Trump in July.
Joe Biden's healthcare advisers have held talks with drugmaker executives on the U.S. government's Operation Warp Speed program to accelerate development of a possible COVID-19 treatment, a Biden spokesman said on Sunday.
"As we previously said in September, because President-Elect Joe Biden is absolutely committed to helping develop a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine as soon as possible, campaign medical advisers have received briefings from companies working to produce vaccines in order to be informed about the process," Biden's spokesman Andrew Bates said in an emailed statement.
“What a spectacle!” mocked Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, referring to the developments in the US since last week’s presidential elections. “One says this is the most fraudulent election in US history. Who says that? The president who is currently in office.”
One does not have to gloat over these developments the way the Ayatollah does. But to see an incumbent American president claim that the elections were “rigged” and make unsubstantiated charges of fraudulent voting and his refusal to commit to accepting the election results is an extraordinary chapter in the history of the United States. (Read more here)
The Trump campaign's strategy to file a barrage of lawsuits challenging President-elect Joe Biden's win is more about providing President Donald Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can't quite grasp and less about changing the election's outcome, according to senior officials, campaign aides and allies who spoke to The Associated Press. Trump has promised legal action in the coming days as he refused to concede his loss to Biden, making an aggressive pitch for donors to help finance any court fight. Trump and his campaign have levelled accusations of large-scale voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other states that broke for Biden, so far without proof. (AP)
A bipartisan group from the last three White Houses is urging the Trump administration to move forward "to immediately begin the post-election transition process," the Associated Press reported.
The call from the Center for Presidential Transition advisory board comes as the General Services Administration is yet to formally recognize Democrat Joe Biden as the president-elect. That's a necessary move to free up money for the transition and clear the way for Biden's team to begin putting in place the transition process at agencies.
"This was a hard-fought campaign, but history is replete with examples of presidents who emerged from such campaigns to graciously assist their successors," the advisory board members said in a statement.
Referring to the results of the US Presidential Elections, Donald Trump said we have all learned a lot in the last two weeks and tweeted, "Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be? We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks!"
Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman have congratulated "Mr Joseph Biden on his victory in the Presidential elections in the United States of America," the official Saudi Press Agency tweeted.
Former President George W Bush has said the American people can have confidence that the recent presidential election was fundamentally fair, and its outcome is clear.
In a statement, the Republican Party leader said: “The fact that so many of our fellow citizens participated in this election is a positive sign of the health of our democracy and a reminder to the world of its strength. No matter how you voted, your vote counted. President Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated. The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.” Read more
The Washington Nationals invited President-elect Joe Biden to throw out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day of the 2021 season."We're excited to continue the long-standing tradition of sitting Presidents throwing out the first pitch at the home of the national pastime in our nation's capital," the team announced Saturday night.
The "long-standing tradition" has been absent of late. President Donald Trump becomes only the second sitting chief executive to not throw out a first pitch on Opening Day at a Major League Baseball game since William Howard Taft began the tradition in 1910. Fellow one-term President Jimmy Carter was the other.The Nationals are scheduled to open the season at Nationals Park on April 1 against the New York Mets. Reuters
Will Joe Biden be good for India? This is something every Indian wants to know. In case you missed it earlier, here is our explainer on what his stance could be like in some key areas, judging by his past record and statements.
When US President-elect Joe Biden was in India’s financial capital in 2013, he had told an audience that his distant relatives live in Mumbai.
Biden reiterated his claim two years later at an event in Washington, saying there are five Bidens living in Mumbai.
With the 77-year-old Democrat set to take oath as the 46th US President in just over two months, nobody in Mumbai has so far turned up to claim that he is Biden’s relative. Decades after he received a letter from someone by the last name of Biden from Mumbai, soon after becoming a senator, Biden learned that his “great, great, great, great, great grandfather” had worked in the East India Company. Read more
US President-elect Joe Biden concluded his victory speech by reciting his deceased son Beau’s favourite popular Catholic hymn “On Eagles’ Wings”, hoping that the carol will give comfort to many Americans grieving the loss of their loved ones due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden, 77, who is a practising Catholic, said the hymn has inspired him through the final days of his election campaign. He would be the second Catholic to hold the office of the President after John F Kennedy in 1960. The Democrat leader lost Beau, an Iraq war veteran who had served as Delaware’s attorney general, in 2015 to a brain tumour at the age of 46. Read more