Election 2020 live updates: Biden can receive intelligence briefings; more states certify election results
an annual holiday tradition – the pardoning of the National Thanksgiving Turkey – but passed up an opportunity to use the ritual as a commentary on the presidential election earlier this month.
Trump, with first lady Melania Trump at his side, used the Rose Garden ceremony to grant a full pardon to a lucky gobbler named Corn and to celebrate the soaring stock market and the “strength, loyalty and faith” of Americans amid the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
“What we’ve endured and been able to endure, with the vaccines now coming out one after another – it’s an incredible thing that happened,” he said in a rare public appearance since losing the presidential election to Joe Biden earlier this month.
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– Michael Collins
acknowledged Tuesday that Democrat Joe Biden carried Arizona, nearly three weeks after the Associated Press called the state for Biden and nearly two weeks after several other major news outlets did.
During a Tuesday morning appearance on Phoenix station KTAR’s “The Mike Broomhead Show,” Ducey said he expected the state to certify Biden’s win and all other election results Monday.
“I’ve said several times: Arizona is a good government state,” Ducey said. “I trust our election system. There’s integrity in our election system. Joe Biden did win Arizona.”
Ducey previously had declined to recognize the president-elect’s Arizona victory. Less than a week ago he said he would accept the results only after all related lawsuits were resolved.
– Maria Polletta (Arizona Republic)
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey:‘Joe Biden did win Arizona’
certified its election results, ensuring that its 20 Electoral College votes will be awarded to President-elect Joe Biden.
“Today, @PAStateDept certified the results of the November 3 election in Pennsylvania for president and vice president of the United States,” Wolf tweeted Tuesday morning. “As required by federal law, I’ve signed the Certificate of Ascertainment for the slate of electors for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
The certification took place as President Donald Trump and his legal team continue to challenge the results by alleging widespread fraud in Philadelphia without proof. Biden is leading Trump by more than 81,000 votes.
A Pennsylvania federal court on Saturday denied Trump’s request to block certification of the state’s election results to give his lawyers time to find evidence to support their claims of a fraudulent election system and improper ballot counting.
Trump in PA:In scathing ruling, judge dismisses Trump campaign’s effort to overturn election results in Pennsylvania
In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann criticized the Trump campaign’s lack of evidence to support its argument to potentially disenfranchise every voter in the commonwealth who cast a ballot – nearly 7 million.
That prompted Sen. Pat Toomey, R-PA., a Trump supporter, to recognize Biden as the winner of the Keystone State in the Nov. 3 election.
“With today’s decision by Judge Matthew Brann, a longtime conservative Republican whom I know to be a fair and unbiased jurist, to dismiss the Trump campaign’s lawsuit, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” Toomey said in a statement Saturday.
– Ledyard King and Kevin McCoy
Most Republicans would vote for Trump in 2024, poll says
Most Republican voters would vote for President Donald Trump in a 2024, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
White House turkey pardon on Tuesday is likely to garner attention as all eyes will be on President Donald Trump after the administrator of the General Services Administration said she would allow President-elect Joe Biden to begin his official transition.
More:Trump administration clears the way for President-elect Biden’s transition to officially begin
The official turkey pardoning ceremony at 2 p.m. EDT will be the president’s first public event in days. Trump has been mostly out of the public eye since losing the election earlier this month.
The GSA letter marked a formal recognition by the Trump administration that Biden won the Nov. 3 election, even though the president has refused to concede and continues to make baseless allegations of voter fraud.
In a pair of tweets, Trump took credit for Murphy’s decision, saying he greenlit the transition because it was in the “best interest of our country.” But he also said he would continue contesting the results.
Trump has used previous turkey pardons to make light of his current political situation. Last year, in the midst of the House’s impeachment inquiry, Trump cracked jokes about efforts to impeach him. In 2018, he joked abut Democrats issuing the turkey subpoenas.
Trump will issue a presidential pardon to the turkeys, Corn and Cob, at a ceremony in the Rose Garden, as part of the annual holiday tradition that was made official in 1989 under former President George H.W. Bush.
Biden’s transition website is now government domain
As one of the first signs of the GSA’s ascertainment of the election, president-elect Biden’s transition website now exists under a government top-level domain.
The Biden team now has buildbackbetter.gov, which redirects to the existing transition website.
–Savannah Behrmann