President elect Joe Biden suspect President Trump of an “unprecedented attack on democracy” in a speech Monday night hours after Electoral College formalized its victory. Mr. Trump has refused to admit the election and has repeatedly tried to use the courts to challenge the results without success.
Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, Mr. Biden went through some of Mr. Trump’s legal challenges, saying each time “they turned out to be groundless”.
“Every avenue was made available for President Trump to contest the results,” said Mr Biden. “He took full advantage of each of those avenues. President Trump was not denied any action he wanted to take.”
He also highlighted Mr. Trump’s insistence that he won in a “landslide” in 2016 with 306 electoral votes, the same number that Mr. Biden won in 2020.
“At the time, President Trump called the electoral college a landslide,” said Mr. Biden. “By his own standards, these numbers represented a clear win back then. And I respectfully propose that they do now.” Mr. Trump won 232 electoral votes.
Sometimes Mr. Biden tried to take a more unifying tone by repeating his campaign promise to become president for “ all Americans ” and saying that he will work just as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those of you who did . ”
“We are a great nation, we are good people, we may come from different places and have different beliefs, but we share a common love for this country and a belief in the Boundless in the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden also praised local election officials, saying they “owe these officials a deep debt” for weathering the coronavirus pandemic and through threats of violence.
The 538 members of the electoral college gathered on Monday in the capitals of the states from coast to coast, where they individually issued paper ballots for president and vice president. While the vote typically takes place without much fanfare, this year’s meeting was put in the spotlight as Mr Trump tried to pressure state republican lawmakers to undermine voter will and nominate their own. This game also failed.
A long-running Texas lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court against four major states attempted to extend Monday’s deadline for the Electoral College to prevent voters from those states from voting. But the Supreme Court rejected the offer on Friday, backed by Mr Trump.
As of Monday afternoon, voters in six battlefield states where the president is fighting election results and alleged fraud – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada – all cast their votes for Mr. Biden.
Federal law requires presidential voters to “meet and vote on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December,” this year, December 14. Each state’s voting took place at different times during the day, starting at 10 a.m. ET and ending with Hawaii at 7 p.m. ET.
Congress counts the votes of the voters on January 6.