November 10, 2020

“It’s an Embarrassment”: Biden Says Trump’s Refusal to Concede Won’t Stand in His Way

Carolyn Kaster/AP

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President Trump has refused to concede the election, which, as things currently stand, he’s losing by nearly 4.7 million popular votes and 65 electoral votes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he won’t accept the election results until the Electoral College meets next month and thinks Trump is justified in trying to sue his way to victory. Most alarmingly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”

President-elect Joe Biden is unfazed. At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, reporters hammered the former vice president with questions about how he would handle Republicans’ refusal to cooperate with the transition. Biden said it didn’t matter; the transition was already underway.

“I’m confident that the fact that they’re not willing to acknowledge we won at this point is not of much consequence in our planning and what we’re able to do between now and January 20,” he said. As for McConnell’s allegiance to Trump? “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.”

Still, the White House has showed no sign of standing down, going so far as to begin preparing a budget for the next fiscal year, even though Trump won’t be in office in February, when the budget proposal is set to be issued. Biden refuses to take such gestures seriously.

“I just think it’s an embarrassment,” he said of Trump’s refusal to concede. “I know from my discussions with foreign leaders thus far that they are hopeful that the United States’ democratic institutions are viewed once again as strong and enduring, but I think at the end of the day, it’s all going to come to fruition on January 20.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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