Presumptive President-elect Joe Biden is pushing forward with plans to announce some of his Cabinet picks, despite President Trump’s refusal to acknowledge he won last week’s election.
“I hope we’re able to be in a position to let people know, at least a couple that we want before Thanksgiving,” Biden told reporters Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware.
Democrats failure to flip the Senate wouldn’t change his nominee selections, Biden said, amid growing pressure he reward more liberal members of his party for their loyalty.
But Biden is being squeezed by a competing pressure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already intimated that he’ll be vocal about who he’ll support and won’t support for confirmation.
“That’s a negotiation that I’m sure we’ll have,” Biden said Tuesday. “I am not a pessimist.”
Biden, who ran on a platform encouraging bipartisanship, remained confident Republicans who were siding with Trump amid his legal challenges to the Nov. 3 contest would soften their stance once the results were certified. Healthcare was an area where he saw opportunities for compromise, the two-term president added.
“I think that the whole Republican Party has been put in a position, with a few notable exceptions, of being mildly intimidated by the sitting president,” he said.
Biden was pressed on whether Republican questions regarding the election’s outcome had hurt his working relationship with former Senate colleagues, such as McConnell. The 36-year Delaware senator said he hadn’t spoken with McConnell yet but expected to “in the not too distant future.”
McConnell has suggested he won’t recognize Biden as the victor before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.
