The United States can breathe a sigh of relief after an eventual deliverance from the twin menaces of 2020: a murderous virus and a vanquished President’s quest to discredit elections.
In a twist of history Monday, the first injections that will end the pandemic went into American arms just as the Electoral College, in a pageant showcasing the country’s resilient system, confirmed Joe Biden as the winner of a legitimate election.
The President-elect responded with a stirring speech, declaring that democracy “beats deep in the heart of the American people,” and sent his most blunt signal yet that it was time for President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to admit the reality of Biden’s coming presidency.
On such a momentous day, the President’s announcement that his loyal Attorney General William Barr — who refused to validate Trump’s false claims of election fraud — had resigned felt like an effort to distract from his own eclipse.
After weeks of measured rhetoric as Trump has tried every avenue to cancel Biden’s win, the President-elect made his clearest statement yet that time was up for baseless claims that the election had been stolen.
But there were signs of a crumbling of the ancient regime, as a few of Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate began to grudgingly accept, six weeks after the election, that Biden is indeed President-elect.
Another adviser said it was highly unlikely that the President would show up at Biden’s inauguration for a ceremonial tableau that is an emblem of America’s mostly unbroken chain of peaceful transfers of executive authority.
Some Republican senators reacted to the latest events by finally admitting that Biden would be the next president, after indulging Trump during his avalanche of baseless claims that the election was corrupted.
