On Sunday, former President George W. Bush congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their election to the White House. Bush is one of the highest-profile Republicans who have come out in acceptance of the election results, which outgoing President Donald Trump has fiercely disputed. Trump has claimed that there’s a widespread conspiracy to steal the election from him via including invalid votes in final tallies, but these claims are completely baseless. Trump’s behavior threatens the foundation of democracy in the United States, since he encourages a hostile rejection of the election results among many of his followers.
In a Sunday statement, Bush said, in part, as follows:
‘I extended my warm congratulations and thanked [Biden] for the patriotic message he delivered last night. I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency. Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man who has won his opportunity to lead and unify our country. I want to congratulate President Trump and his supporters on a hard-fought campaign. He earned the votes of more than 70 million Americans — an extraordinary political achievement. They have spoken, and their voices will continue to be heard through elected Republicans at every level of government.’
Bush actually also directly addressed the lies from Trump that there’s been widespread fraud in the election. Bush insisted that Americans “can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”
Harris, as Bush references, is the first woman to hold the office of Vice President of the United States. Both Harris and Biden spoke to the nation on Saturday evening following news networks’ decisions to call the race for the Democratic ticket, and in her remarks, Harris extolled the work of the many trailblazing women who came before her, pledging to carry on the tradition and meaningfully address the needs of the American people.
In his speech, Biden called for unity and condemned the rampant “demonization” that has plagued American politics recently. He insisted that Americans must not consider their opponents as their enemies — which is a sharp change of tone from Donald Trump’s perspective, to say the least.
Biden said, in part, that he “ran as a proud Democrat” but “will now be an American president,” and he pledged to “work as hard for those who didn’t vote for” him “as those who did” — which again constitutes a sharp change of pace from Trump, who has routinely complained about Americans who he felt didn’t like him enough.
During his speech, Biden added:
‘Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end — here and now. The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some mysterious force beyond our control. It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make, and if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate — and I believe that this is part of the mandate from the American people. They want us to cooperate.’
No matter whether Trump accepts the reality at hand or not, he’s lost.
