{"id":101034,"date":"2020-11-12T10:43:13","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T02:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=101034"},"modified":"2020-11-12T10:43:15","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T02:43:15","slug":"us-presidential-election-trump-refusal-to-concede-an-embarrassment-says-pres-elect-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=101034","title":{"rendered":"US presidential election: Trump refusal to concede ‘an embarrassment’, says Pres-elect Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u00a0WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (NNN-AGENCIES)\u00a0—<\/strong>Joe Biden has said President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in last week’s White House election is “an embarrassment”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the US president-elect – who has been making contact with foreign leaders – insisted nothing would stop the transfer of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump meanwhile tweeted he would ultimately win the race that all major TV networks have forecast he lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As happens every four years, US media projected the election victor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the state-by-state results have yet been certified, several vote counts are continuing, and the outcome will only be set in stone once the US Electoral College meets on Dec 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president-elect was asked by a reporter what he thought of President Trump’s refusal to acknowledge defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly,” Biden, a Democrat, said in Wilmington, Delaware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The only thing that, how can I say this tactfully, I think it will not help the president’s legacy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“At the end of the day, you know, it’s all going to come to fruition on Jan 20,” he added, referring to inauguration day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden has been fielding phone calls with foreign leaders as he prepares to assume office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Irish Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among those he spoke to on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referring to those calls, Biden said: “I’m letting them know that America is back. We’re going to be back in the game.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris forge ahead, a little-known government agency led by a Trump appointee is stalling the handover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The General Services Administration co-ordinates funding and access to federal departments for incoming administrations. However, it has so far declined to formally recognise Biden as president-elect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the Democrat said: “We don’t see anything slowing us down, quite frankly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter to fire off several tweets in capital letters about “massive ballot counting abuse”, asserting: “We will win!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His tweets were labelled by the social media network as disputed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president has been making unsubstantiated claims that Biden was only able to win the election through electoral corruption, but no proof has emerged so far to support the allegation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, told a news conference at the Department of State on Tuesday that once every “legal” vote was counted a “second Trump administration” would begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Pennsylvania postal worker who claimed that officials tampered with mail-in ballots in the swing state has recanted his claims, according to the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives Oversight Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Hopkins alleged that a postmaster in Erie, Pennsylvania, had instructed workers to backdate late votes so they could be counted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He signed a legal statement under oath attesting to his claim, but the oversight committee said Hopkins had disowned the allegation after questioning by a US Postal Service inspector general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A man claiming to be Hopkins later denied retracting his story in a video posted to YouTube. “I did not recant my statement,” he said. “That is not what happened and you will find out tomorrow.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump retweeted the video, lauding the purported whistleblower as a “brave patriot”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopkins’ claim was cited in a letter from Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, to the Department of Justice, urging it to open a federal investigation. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (NNN-AGENCIES)\u00a0—Joe Biden has said President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in last week’s White House election is “an embarrassment”. But the US president-elect – who has been making contact with foreign leaders – insisted nothing would stop the transfer of power. Trump meanwhile tweeted he would ultimately win the race that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":101036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101034"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/101036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}