It has now been two full weeks since the election—and a week and a half since Joe Biden won. And yet, for the most part, Republicans have stubbornly avoided recognizing that reality, unwilling to gall Donald Trump, who won’t concede and publicly insists he was the victim of a massive voter fraud conspiracy. Gradually, though, GOP lawmakers are beginning to acknowledge Biden as the president-elect—with reservations, of course.
“It grows increasingly unlikely that a remedy would involve overturning the election,” North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer told reporters Monday. “Right now, it looks like it will be President Biden,” South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds told the press. “We understand that.” “On January 20 we’re going to inaugurate a president,” Texas Senator John Cornyn said. “And it will probably be Joe Biden.”
In qualifying their acknowledgments, they are continuing to show an annoying and pernicious deference to Trump and his dead-end legal battle. But recognizing that Biden will be president in two months, and calling for him to receive intelligence briefings, is progress, and it’s likely only a matter of time before more finally accept him as the president-elect. Marco Rubio became the just the fifth GOP senator—with Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse—to refer to him as such on Monday, telling reporters that a Biden presidency is “the highest likelihood at this point.”
Then there’s Lindsey Graham, who not only refuses to acknowledge Biden’s victory but is apparently determined to help Trump undermine it.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, told the Washington Post on Monday that members of his party had been trying to bully him into reversing the voting results in the state—and that Graham had tried to get him to throw out legally cast ballots that could have helped Biden capture the state. Graham late Monday acknowledged discussing the vote with Raffensperger, but denied pressuring him. “If he feels threatened by that conversation,” Graham said, “he’s got a problem.” But Raffensperger, who says he’s received death threats for defending the integrity of his state’s voting systems, told the Post that “it sure looked like [Graham] was wanting to go down that road” of discarding ballots.
That could be a felony if true, and there were immediate calls for a probe into the South Carolina senator. “This is both outrageous and should be investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee,” Democratic lawyer Marc E. Elias, who has been successfully battling Trump’s election lawsuits in court, tweeted Monday. “Did Lindsey Graham illegally pressure the Georgia Secretary of State to rig the election after the fact?” Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries wrote. “The Justice Department should find out.” “For the chairman of the Senate committee charged with oversight of our legal system to have reportedly suggested that an election official toss out large numbers of legal ballots from American voters is appalling,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Post.
Graham, who strongly criticized Trump during the 2016 campaign, went full MAGA a long time ago. But his acquiescence to Trump had always seemed like the political calculation of one of the most craven politicians in the country. What’s in it for him now that Trump is on the outs? Fear of Trump’s most fervent supporters aside, it would seem high time for him to follow others in his party and grudgingly acknowledge reality. But he is continuing to enable Trump, now putting himself in potential legal peril on the president’s behalf. Asked by Politico if he accepts Biden’s victory, Graham replied: “No.” “Not until the courts have rendered a verdict on the claims made by the president,” he said, failing to mention that Trump is getting absolutely trounced in court. “All of y’all are all over us ’cause you want the guy to lose. If the shoe were on the other foot, you’d be asking questions about widespread fraud.”
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