Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President on the West Front of the US Capitol, about two weeks after insurrectionists incited by Donald Trump stormed the building.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
The Electoral College is all set to vote this Monday and make President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump official. Electors from all 50 states and the District of Columbia will meet to cast their ballots and confirm Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States and California Senator Kamala Harris as the Vice President.
Early attempts from Trump, his administration, and Republican lawmakers attempted to produce allegations and evidence in key swing states that a majority of the votes were fraudulent and Trump had actually won his reelection. The Supreme Court has since delivered several rebukes which found no evidence to any of these claims, and multiple state courts also refused to even see the cases because of how baseless the allegations were.
After the ballots are counted and cast by the end of the day Biden will likely have well over the 270 votes needed to officially win the presidency. Once the ballots are counted they’re transported to Washington D.C. where they will then be tallied by Congress on January 6th.
Once the votes are officially cast, Biden plans to deliver a speech on prime time television about the resilience of US democracy in an effort to unite a nation that has been so ideologically divided within the past four years. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana recently spoke on CNN’s State of the Union and claimed that “obviously, Biden is the President-elect. He has the 270 Electoral College Votes.”
Since the election, Trump and his team have made a multitude of false claims that he won landslides in states that Biden won by thousands of votes, as well as tweets that simply claimed he won the presidency. Almost every tweet from Trump has a large warning on the bottom that states the information given in his tweets are false and don’t reflect the actual results of the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, while the current president and his administration have spent the last month trying to reverse the results of the election, thousands of Americans have continued to die from Covid-19, and hundreds of thousands of new cases are appearing every day thanks to the complete lack of federal policy. The first Covid-19 vaccine has been officially approved for distribution in America, however, if strict lockdown measures, along with all other health and safety procedures, aren’t strictly implemented, case numbers and deaths will continue to rise exponentially.
Beyond the pandemic, Trump’s consistent claims that the current President-elect won by illegal ballots and procedure is only further dividing the country. Never in the history of US elections has there ever been such a blatant and public effort from the current standing president to try to reverse the results of an election without any actual evidence whatsoever. His supporters see these constant claims that the American political system is “corrupt” and thus take to the streets in violent outrage.
Members of the far-right Proud Boys group recently made headlines after violently clashing with an anti-Trump demonstration that up until that point had remained peaceful. Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander spoke with the media recently about how he hopes after Monday’s Electoral results that Trump will put the country first and really begin the peaceful transition of power: “We need to not lose one day in the transition in getting the vaccine out.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
President-elect Joe Biden is currently working on building out the staff that will accompany him into the White House as he begins his term as 46th President of the United States. This Tuesday, Biden’s team announced that he would be hiring two long-time campaign advisers for top roles, and also announced several other members who worked on his presidential campaign that will be in senior positions.
Mike Donilon was the chief strategist for Biden’s campaign who crafted a majority of his speeches and advertising strategies for the 2020 race; he came up with framing the election as a “battle for the nation.” Donilon was also announced as Biden’s senior adviser this past Tuesday. Steve Rucchetti was the Biden campaign chairman who also has worked alongside Barack Obama and Bill Clinton during their presidencies. Rucchetti was announced to be a counselor to the president.
A few days prior to these announcements Biden named Ron Klain as his chief of staff and Jen O’Malley Dillon as his deputy chief of staff. Dillion was the campaign manager who took over the campaign after Biden won the primaries and helped it receive a slew of funding.
Louisiana representative Cedric Richmond is the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, who announced he would be resigning from his House seat to take a senior adviser position for the president-elect. Richmond will also be taking on the role of director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Julie Chavez Rodriguez was a Biden deputy campaign manager who also previously worked as a top aide for Vice president-elect Kamala Harris during her initial campaign for presidency during the primaries. Rodriguez also worked as a special assistant to the president and senior deputy director of public engagement under President Barack Obama’s Administration, so it’s safe to say she’s familiar with everyone entering into the White House this January. Rodriguez will be director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under President Biden.
Chief of Staff Ron Klain recently spoke with the press about all of the hires that Biden and Harris are collectively making – as well as First Lady Jill Biden who is currently working on hiring her top staffers as well – and discussed how these positions needed to be meticulously filled with individuals Biden trusts to combat all the issues America is currently facing.
“President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris have an ambitious and urgent agenda for action. The team we have already started to assemble will enable us to meet the challenges facing our country on day one.”
Dana Remus was Biden’s campaign general counsel who also has experience as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Additionally, Remus was a general counsel to the Obama Foundation and the Obama’s’ personal office, making her the perfect choice for Biden’s counsel.
Annie Tomasini was Biden’s traveling chief of staff throughout his campaign, and will be hired as director of Oval Office Operations; which is heavily thought of as a “gatekeeping role” that will put her close to the president-elect, much like she was during his campaign. Further announcements regarding Biden’s staff and cabinet will likely be announced as the days progress and we get closer and closer to the new year.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.