LANSING, Mich./WILMINGTON, Del. – (Warsoor) -President-elect Joe Biden delivered a forceful rebuke on Monday to President Donald Trump’s attacks on the legitimacy of his victory, hours after winning the state-by-state Electoral College vote that officially determines the U.S. presidency.
“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,” Biden said in a prime-time speech from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. “Now it’s time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history – to unite, to heal.”
Monday’s vote, typically a formality, assumed outsized significance in light of Trump’s extraordinary effort to subvert the process due to what he has falsely alleged was widespread voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election.
California, the most-populous U.S. state, put Biden over the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College when its 55 electors unanimously cast ballots for him and his running mate, Kamala Harris. Biden and Harris – the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to become vice president-elect – will be sworn in on Jan. 20.
In a roughly 13-minute speech, Biden, the Democratic former vice president, called for unity while voicing confidence that the country’s democratic institutions had held in the face of Trump’s attempts to reverse the election outcome.
“The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago,” Biden said. “We now know that not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame.”
Biden emphasized that Trump and his allies filed “dozens and dozens” of legal challenges to the vote totals without success, including a Texas lawsuit that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate four states’ results. The court, including three Trump appointees, rejected the bid with no dissents last week.
SOURCE: REUTERS