Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said some of his Republican colleagues have privately told him to congratulate Joe Biden on his apparent presidential victory on their behalf.
Coons, a senator from Delaware and one of Biden’s closest allies in the Senate, told CNN’s New Day that Republicans have reached out to him and said, “Please convey my well wishes to the president-elect, but I can’t say that publicly yet.”
He said he has continued to “urge them privately to do the right thing and to help the president accept reality and to help their caucus stand up publicly because, frankly, the transition is going to be chaotic at best if it doesn’t get moving very soon. It should be underway already.”
A number of media outlets — including the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, and Fox News, among others — projected Biden to be the next president.
While Biden has given an acceptance speech and has put a transition team in motion, President Trump has not conceded, and his campaign is seeking recounts and legal remedies in the hope of winning four more years in the White House. The Trump campaign has yet to come up with verifiable proof to support their claims of widespread fraud, and state election officials have accused them of pushing conspiracy theories.
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They have not alleged any intentional or unintentional malfeasance in any state the president has been projected to win.
Many GOP allies on the Hill have encouraged the campaign to keep fighting, while only a handful have publicly congratulated Biden on his apparent victory. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Mitt Romney of Utah, all of whom have faced the president’s wrath at one point, have congratulated the former vice president.
Republican insiders have privately acknowledged Biden will be the next president, however, they are afraid of what publicly admitting such a damning fact would do to the loyal Trump base while the Senate majority remains up for grabs with two Georgia runoff elections scheduled for early January.
