Congressional Republicans offered mealy-mouthed statements that barely acknowledge Joe Biden's convincing win.
The Electoral College on Monday made President-elect Joe Biden's win official, delivering him 306 votes to Donald Trump's 232 — a vote that should be the end of the long, embarrassing saga of Republicans refusing to admit Biden's victory.
Yet some lawmakers are still twisting themselves in knots to avoid admitting the reality that has been before them for more than a month: Trump lost a free and fair election.
"It's a very, very narrow path for the President," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CNN's Manu Raju on Monday night.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) wouldn't respond when asked by Politico's Burgess Everett about whether Biden is the president-elect, calling it a "gotcha question."
"It’s what every senator is being asked," Barrasso added, failing to acknowledge that Republicans are being asked that question because they have not acknowledged that Biden won and have defended Trump's lawsuits and conspiracy theories. "Three weeks ago the transition occurred in terms of... access to the briefings & access to the money."
Other GOP senators still wouldn't acknowledge Biden's win even after the Electoral College vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to respond the question when asked on Monday, according to Bloomberg News' Eric Wasson.
"I'm not going to comment on that," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told CNN.
"I don't have anything for you on that," Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) also told CNN.
And a contingent of other Republican senators still backed Trump's anti-democratic effort to get courts to overturn the results to hand Trump a win.
"Every legal vote needs to be counted and every illegal vote needs to be thrown out," Montana GOP Sen. Steve Daines told Politico. "Montana cast three electoral votes for President Trump. We’ll wait now and see if Congress will certify that in January."
North Dakota's Kevin Cramer, meanwhile, made a lengthy statement that used as many words as possible to say Biden seemed to have won, while also suggesting there was still some uncertainty that Biden would in fact be inaugurated as the next president.
"Well, it seems to me that being elected by the Electoral College is a threshold where a title like that is probably most appropriate and it's, I suppose you can say official — if there is such a thing as official president-elect, or anything else–elect," he said. "And there's an inauguration that will swear somebody in and that person will be the president of the United States, but whether you call it that or not, you know, there are legal challenges that are ongoing — not very many — probably not a remedy that would change the outcome but, so, I don't — again I don't know how politician refers to another politician, but it does look to me like the big race is really between the inaugural committee and the Justice Department at this point, so we'll see how the emails turn out."
Biden, for his part, once again declared victory in a speech Monday night, in which he knocked down the lies from Trump and his GOP allies that questioned the legitimacy of the results.
Biden slammed the dozens of failed legal challenges against the results as an "unprecedented assault on our democracy."
"In America, when questions are raised about the legitimacy of elections, those questions are resolved through the legal processes," Biden said. "And that’s precisely what happened here. All the counts were confirmed ... none of this has stopped baseless claims."
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
