Senate Majority Leader McConnell publicly recognizes Biden’s win. The comments are significant and only came after the Electoral College affirmed it.
“The electoral college has spoken,” McConnell said in remarks from the Senate floor in the US Capitol, adding, “Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
“The fact that it took six weeks for my colleagues to recognize reality and stop undermining our Democratic process is sad and disappointing,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin in a floor speech Tuesday following McConnell’s remarks.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, made the comments after praising the Trump presidency in the past tense, touting his administration’s accomplishments, including the country’s “economic prosperity,” “foreign policy,” judicial appointments, and “bold regulatory changes” in a floor speech.
“It would take far more than one speech to catalog all the major wins the Trump administration has helped deliver for the American people,” he said. “The outsider who swore he would shake up Washington and lead our country to new accomplishments, both at home and abroad proceeded to do exactly that. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence deserve our thanks and our gratitude for their tireless work and their essential roles in all these victories and in many more.”
In his floor remarks, McConnell also congratulated Vice-President elect Kamala Harris for the first time.
“I also want to congratulate the vice president-elect, our colleague from California, Senator Harris,” he said. “Beyond our differences, all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time.”
McConnell said while millions wished the election would have yielded a different result, “our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January the 20th. The Electoral College has spoken.”
Pressed multiple times Monday about whether he’d accept Biden as President-elect, Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, continued to point to how Trump had won his state’s electoral votes.
“Montana cast three electoral votes for President Trump, and the Electoral College voted today,” said Daines, who just won reelection in Montana. “And Congress will need to ratify in January.”
“We’ve now gone through the constitutional process and the electors have voted, so there’s a President-elect,” Blunt said. “With Vice President Biden as the President-elect, the President continues, obviously, to have all the options he has available to him, but the electoral vote today was significant.”
Two other members of GOP leadership — Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas — both said that any effort to overturn the election results on January 6, when a joint of session of Congress meets to count the electoral votes, would be fruitless.
“In the end at some point you have to face the music,” Thune said Monday on his way to McConnell’s office for a leadership meeting. “And I think once the Electoral College settles the issue today, it’s time for everybody to move on.”
This story has been updated with additional developments Tuesday.
CNN’s Daniella Diaz and Clare Foran contributed to this report.
