Biden Rips Trump’s Election Challenge in Speech Marking Electoral College Win

By Staff, Agencies

Joe Biden, addressing the country shortly after state electors declared him president-elect, blasted outgoing President Donald Trump for mounting an “extreme” and “unprecedented assault on our democracy.”

A sometimes-emotional and forceful incoming president called Trump’s claims of a "rigged election" nothing shy of “unconscionable,” saying in a short speech from Wilmington, Delaware that the Electoral College vote on Monday making him the winner showed the 2020 election was “honest, and it was free and it fair.”

He hailed state and local officials who endured death and other threats of violence from Trump’s supporters. “And they wouldn’t be bullied. It was truly remarkable.” Biden said.

Notably, Biden noted that the outgoing president was allowed “every legal avenue” to pursue his claims of fraud.

But the matter, he said, has been “resolved through the legal process, and that’s precisely what happened here.” His use of the past tense appeared an attempt to describe the election as a closed matter, seeming to contend that Trump has expended his use of the courts and is out of options – other than to return to civilian life on 20 January.

“They were heard, again and again. And each time they were heard, they were found to be without merit,” Biden said of Trump’s legal challenges. “More than 80 judges across this country” heard the cases, “and in in every case, no evidence was found.”

He described Trump as taking a “position so extreme, we’ve never seen it before."

The president, he contended “refused to respect the people, refused to respect the rule of law” and orchestrated an “unprecedented assault on our democracy.”

Biden spoke after clearing a major milestone in his transition, from the same rented theatre he has used for public remarks since being projected as the next commander in chief four days after Election Day.

Designees to the Electoral College met on Monday to assign their state's Electoral College votes, ballots based on ones cast by voters either by mail or in-person.