Joe Biden formally selected as 46th US president by Electoral College
Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas joins 'Special Report' with the latest on the 2020 presidential election results.
Whether he accepts defeat or not, Donald Trump’s presidency will become history at noon on Jan. 20, when former Vice President Joe Biden becomes our nation’s leader.
The Electoral College voted Monday to elect Biden as our next president, affirming his impressive and legitimate victory in the Nov. 3 election. Last week the Supreme Court rejected an effort by President Trump and his allies to overturn the election by invalidating the votes of millions of people in four states carried by Biden.
President-elect Biden received 306 electoral votes to President Trump’s 232 — the exact margin of victory that Trump won four years ago when he defeated Hillary Clinton. In the popular vote, Biden received almost 81.3 million votes, compared to 74.2 million for Trump.
In other words, the election wasn’t close. And courts around the nation have thrown out Trump’s baseless claims that Biden’s victory was fraudulent and based on rigged voting. Even Attorney General William Barr, a Republican who was appointed by Trump, has said there was not widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.
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All 50 states and the District of Columbia have certified their election results, with some holding recounts. Now with the Electoral College vote, there can be no doubt that Biden is the election winner and will soon be our president. And Sen. Kamala Harris of California will soon become the first woman, the first Black person, and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president.
Trump and his loyalists may never concede that he lost in a free and fair election but at this point, it just doesn’t matter. Rather, what matters now is what comes next under a Biden-Harris administration. And what comes next is the hard work of governing, unifying, and healing our fractured nation.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said after his country’s armed forces defeated Nazi Germany in a key World War II battle: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
These words ring true today, with the coronavirus vaccine finally receiving an emergency use authorization and as we start the long process of defeating the pandemic and rebuilding our economy. We are at war with the microscopic coronavirus, and while this battle is very different from World War II, victory is just as vital.
So let’s get to work! And when I say “let’s,” I mean Democrats AND Republicans. Because the only way our leaders in Washington will be able to help the American people recover from a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 of us and devastated our economy is if we all work together. And what a blessed change that will be from the past four years of chaos and division.
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In fact, Joe Biden couldn’t be more different than President Trump. Biden has a long and successful record of working across the aisle and unifying elected officials and Americans of all political persuasions.
On Nov. 7, after news organizations announced he was the winner the presidential election, Biden said he “pledged to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify. Who doesn't see red and blue states, but a United States.” He added that he “will work with all my heart to win the confidence of the whole people.”
That is how Joe Biden will lead our country and work to improve the lives of all Americans —whether they voted for him or not.
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Biden’s decades of experience in Washington bear this out. As President Barack Obama’s vice president, Biden persuaded three Republican senators to support an economic stimulus bill in 2009 that helped end the Great Recession. Biden also helped convince his old Senate buddy, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and provide the critical 60th vote for the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.
Now you don’t need to tell me that the Republican Party post-Trump isn’t the same as it was pre-Trump. But I’ve known President-elect Biden for many years, and I know that his approach to governing is, first and foremost, to bring people together and to build broad and diverse coalitions.
As Biden also said in his victory speech, “there has never been anything we haven’t been able to do when we’ve done it together: Democrats, Republicans and independents; progressives, moderates and conservatives; young and old; urban, suburban and rural; gay, straight, transgender; White. Latino. Asian. Native American; and especially for those moments when this campaign was at its lowest — the African American community stood up again for me. They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”
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Since Biden’s victory, the question I’ve been asked most often by my friends on the right and the left is: Will Republicans heed the president-elect’s heartfelt call to work together? Putting aside the two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate, Washington works best when we work together.
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And call me crazy but, despite the fierce partisanship exhibited by both political parties over the past 20-plus years, I have faith in our government and our leaders, both Democratic and Republican. This faith is rooted in my belief that when our country faces its greatest crises, our leaders will stand together and put their duty to help the American people above their loyalty to party politics.
Today our nation is grappling with a pandemic, an economic crisis, powerful calls for racial justice, and the existential threat of climate change. These are clearly the incoming Biden administration’s top four priorities:
1 — Defeating COVID-19 and ensuring that a vaccine is distributed first to America’s most vulnerable citizens and health care workers.
2— Rebuilding our economy for working families.
3— Dealing with systemic racism and advancing racial equity.
4—Tackling the climate crisis and leading the world by example.
The Biden-Harris administration received an unequivocal mandate from American voters to solve these crises and to lead our country toward a just and equitable recovery for all Americans.
And now our soon-to-be president and vice president must be given the leeway to choose their nominees for Cabinet posts – and the Senate must act swiftly to confirm these nominees – so that the new administration will be ready on Day One to respond to these dire threats to our health and safety.
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In concluding his victory speech, President-elect Biden quoted one of my favorite Catholic Hymns, “On Eagle’s Wings,” and he prayed that “together — on eagle's wings — we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.”
Like our incoming president, I pray that we raise each other up so that — together — we can address the urgent crises facing our country and that “We the People of the United States” have called upon our leaders to do.
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