Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election for the first time.
“Our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect,” the top Republican in the Senate said from the Senate floor Tuesday morning, six weeks after the November election. “The Electoral College has spoken, so today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
McConnell also congratulated Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
“I also want to congratulate the vice president-elect, our colleague from California, Senator Harris,” he said. “Beyond our differences, all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time.”
In his floor speech, McConnell also spoke highly of the Trump administration’s accomplishments, including the nation’s “economic prosperity,” “foreign policy,” judicial appointments and “bold regulatory changes.”
A day earlier, the Electoral College affirmed Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.
But in the weeks following the election, most Republicans, including McConnell, were reluctant to acknowledge Biden’s win as Trump and others in the GOP pursued aggressive legal efforts to overturn the results.
Last week, 126 House Republicans joined a lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general that called on the U.S. Supreme Court to upend the Democrat’s win in four states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and award those electors to Trump.
Now that McConnell has recognized the incoming administration, other congressional Republicans were expected to acquiesce, reports said.
Some Republicans remained noncommittal to Biden’s win Monday, but others were apparently coming around on accepting Trump’s defeat. GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri announced that the congressional inauguration committee, which he leads, will meet soon to discuss the Jan. 20 ceremony to inaugurate Biden.
“We’ve now gone through the constitutional process and the electors have voted, so there’s a president-elect,” Blunt said, according to CNN. “With Vice President Biden as the president-elect, the president continues, obviously, to have all the options he has available to him, but the electoral vote today was significant.”
Additionally, Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas signaled preemptive disapproval for any further Republican efforts to overturn the election results on Jan. 6, when a joint of session of Congress meets to certify the electoral vote.
“In the end, at some point you have to face the music,” Thune said Monday on his way to McConnell’s office for a leadership meeting, according to CNN. “And I think once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it’s time for everybody to move on.”
This is a breaking news story. Please stay with AJC.com for the latest developments.
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