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Republican Leaders Wait for Trump Before Giving Nod to Biden Win

Republican Leaders Wait for Trump Before Giving Nod to Biden Win

Republican congressional leaders still wary of crossing President Donald Trump are holding back from acknowledging Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race.

Some prominent party members, including former President George W. Bush and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, have offered Biden congratulations since networks and the Associated Press projected that the former vice president was the winner on Saturday morning. Plaudits from world leaders have also piled up.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and most other GOP leaders in Congress have either stayed silent or said that legal challenges to the outcome should be allowed to play out. None, however, have repeated Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread vote fraud, and there were indications that there are limits to how long they’ll wait.

Republican Leaders Wait for Trump Before Giving Nod to Biden Win

Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said media projections of the winner are mostly meaningless, especially since so many forecasts for the election turned out to be wrong. Any determination of the result should await final counts by state officials and any challenges from the president’s legal team, he said on Sunday.

“That has to happen and then we move forward,” Blunt said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “It’s time for the president’s lawyers to present the facts and then it’s time for those facts to speak for themselves.”

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, took a similar position. He tweeted on Saturday that there are “still serious legal challenges” that haven’t been resolved and that “the election is not final.”

Trump still exerts a powerful hold on the party that many Republicans expect will endure past his time in office. Going into the election, 95% of Republicans said they approved of his performance as president, according to Gallup, and exit polls showed 93% of Republicans voted to re-elect him.

McConnell and other Senate Republicans also may need his pull to keep control of the chamber, which will be determined by two January runoff races in Georgia. Both of the incumbent GOP senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, closely aligned themselves with Trump in their election campaigns. Democrats could gain Senate control if they win both seats.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican and Trump ally, said many in the GOP are willing to give Trump more time -- at least for now.

“This was a very contentious election,” Christie said on ABC. “You have the president sitting in the White House not acknowledging it. And I think there’s lots of Republicans who are trying to feel their way around that.”

Republican Leaders Wait for Trump Before Giving Nod to Biden Win

Christie said Trump’s base doesn’t want him to concede, but at some point Trump’s lawyers will have to either present evidence that vote counts were wrong or fraudulent or give up the fight.

“I’m hoping that more Republicans move in the direction of saying, not that we don’t support the president -- he’s been a friend of mine for 20 years -- but friendship doesn’t mean that you’re blind,” Christie said. “If they don’t come forward with the -- with the proof, then it’s time to move on.”

Hardly any congressional Republicans have congratulated Biden or Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah on Saturday tweeted his acknowledgment of their win and sent good wishes, saying both are of “good will and admirable character.” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also congratulated the two in a tweeted statement, and said the nation now will turn to “the peaceful transition of power.”

Bush weighed in on Sunday. In a statement, he said he had just spoken individually with Biden and with Harris to offer his congratulations.

“I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country,” Bush said.

One former House member, who didn’t want to be identified by name, said that sooner or later Trump and Republican leaders have to recognize the election is over.

Lingering Influence

The former lawmaker said that he fears that if top GOP officials maintain their silence, it helps to promote the idea to Republican voters that the election lack legitimacy.

Some Republicans may be looking warily, or even fearfully, at potential lingering influence Trump will have over his backers in 2022 and 2024 -- or even the potential Trump might run again for the White House, the former GOP lawmaker said. Some Republicans are also carefully gauging and scripting where they need to stand in order to achieve their own ambitions in the party, he said.

But other former congressional Republicans say they do not disagree with how McConnell, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and others are waiting to let things play out, including in the courts.

“I have a different perspective because I was in the legislature in 2000 when we had the Bush v. Gore debacle,” said former Florida GOP congressman Dennis Ross, now director of the American Center for Political Leadership at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida.

System Integrity

“I think it is a very difficult task for Trump to win,” said Ross, who served four terms in the House until 2019. “The odds are that Biden is going to be president.”

Ross said “it’s got to play itself out” as Trump’s various legal challenges make their way through the courts. He said 20 years ago, when the fight over a recount in Florida went to the Supreme Court, the race wasn’t settled until December.

Former Representative Tom Marino of Pennsylvania, who’s also a former U.S. Attorney, urged “just let the lawyers do what they have to do.” He, like Ross, doesn’t have a problem with the stance of Republican leaders in Congress.

Marino, who left the House in 2019 after five terms, said any suggestion of election irregularities needs to be looked at “for the integrity of the system.”

Marino had a different take, though, on Trump’s future influence in the GOP as a defeated former president.

“There’s very little loyalty in DC,” said Marino. “When they know and feel that Trump isn’t going to be the president, they are going to forget about him.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.