Biden rips Trump's refusal to concede after Electoral College vote

Biden rips Trump's refusal to concede after Electoral College vote (The Hilllink): President-elect Joe Biden on Monday blasted President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 vote and called on the nation to move beyond the divisive election season hours after the Electoral College officially certified his victory.

Speaking near his home in Delaware, Biden noted that he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had won more votes than any previous presidential ticket in history, calling their victory the “clearest demonstration of the will of the American people.”

Biden noted that he won by about the same Electoral College margin as Trump did in 2016. The president at the time called it a “landslide victory.” The former vice president said that Trump had made use of every legal avenue available to him in challenging the outcome and that now it is time to accept the results and move on.

“Respecting the will of the people is at the heart of our democracy even when we find those results hard to accept,” Biden said. “But that’s the obligation of those who have taken on a sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed ... faith in our institutions held and the integrity of our elections remained intact,” he continued. 

"And now it’s time to turn the page as we’ve done throughout our history, to unite and to heal.”

Electors from every state gathered at Capitols across the country on Monday to affirm Biden's victory in the Electoral College, moving him one step closer to inauguration next month. Biden will finish with 306 electoral votes, compared with 232 for Trump. But six weeks after Election Day, Trump has still not conceded, and his campaign is working to have the outcome overturned in state and federal courts, where dozens of its lawsuits have so far been rejected or dismissed.

Trump has been making unsubstantiated claims about the election being stolen from him through widespread fraud. He’s called on GOP electors and lawmakers to revolt in an effort to reverse the outcome. But the Electoral College meeting on Monday ran mostly smoothly, despite some demonstrations and protests across the country.

Biden praised the election workers and state officials he said had refused to bend in the face of political pressure — and in some cases, threats of violence.

“They could not and would not give credence to what they know is not true,” he said. 

“They knew this election was overseen, it was honest, it was free and it was fair. They saw it with their own eyes, and they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything different.”

“They were subject to political pressure, verbal abuse and even threats of physical violence,” he added. “It’s simply unconscionable.”