Mitch McConnell Acknowledges Joe Biden as President-Elect After Electoral College Vote

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally acknowledged Joe Biden as the president-elect on Tuesday morning. The Electoral College formally voted on the 2020 presidential election on Monday night, and at first McConnell refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory when approached by reporters. However, on Tuesday morning he accepted the results, to the relief of many critics.

“Our country has, officially, a president-elect and a vice-president elect,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, according to a report by CBS News. “I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. The president-elect is no stranger to the Senate. He’s devoted himself to public service for many years… Beyond our differences, all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time.”

McConnell’s acceptance of the election results come over a month after the results became clear, and over 12 hours after many other Republicans began acknowledging the results based on the Electoral College vote. McConnell has been a staunch ally of President Donald Trump and has supported his baseless conspiracy theories about the election up to this point.

Many Republican lawmakers stood by Trump as he refused to concede the election up until now. Trump was within his legal rights to seek recounts, file lawsuits and challenge the results, but he did so with no evidence of errors or tampering that would have changed the result. At the same time, he used social media to spread conspiracy theories about election fraud with no evidence, writing as if these theories were proven fact.

The result has been to shake public faith in the democratic system, with many of Trump’s social media followers taking his word for it and believing that the election was “rigged.” Therefore, critics have come down hard on lawmakers like McConnell, who refused to speak out against the president up until now, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that he lost a secure election.

“When it’s breaking news for elected officials to admit the obvious, our democracy is pretty broken as well,” tweeted journalist Jason Johnson on Monday in response to McConnell’s acknowledgment of Biden.

While McConnell and some other top Republicans have now accepted the election results, Trump himself continues to deny them. The president continued to tweet lies about “voter fraud” on Tuesday morning, indicating that he still has no intention of conceding. With inauguration day coming in just over a month, Trump may make history by leaving office without conceding at all.