U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) talks with reporters following the weekly Republican Senate conference meeting in the Mansfield Room at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., December 1, 2020.
Tom Williams | Reuters
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell explicitly acknowledged Joe Biden as president-elect for the first time on Tuesday after weeks of Republican delays in recognizing the 2020 election result.
The Kentucky Republican congratulated the incoming Democratic president after the Electoral College formally certified Biden’s victory on Monday. Numerous GOP senators did not acknowledge Biden as the election winner for more than a month as the president made baseless claims that widespread election fraud cost him a second term in the White House.
“Our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
“The Electoral College has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden,” he later continued.
Trump has vowed never to concede to Biden. He is falsely claiming he won the race and is spreading a bevy of unproven, debunked and baseless conspiracy theories as he argues that he was robbed of reelection by massive electoral and voter fraud.
Even after the Electoral College cast its votes to make Biden’s win official, Trump continued to amplify his false claims on Twitter.
“Tremendous problems being found with voting machines,” he tweeted Tuesday morning, providing no evidence. “Able to take a landslide victory and reduce it to a tight loss,” he falsely tweeted.
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