Early in the morning on November the 7th, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners of the 2020 presidential election! Perhaps knowing the President would challenge the results, the news networks held off on declaring there was a winner until there was absolutely no question that the results simply couldn't be challenged. Initially, Philadelphia was prepared to host a small protest in front of City Hall, but when it became clear that we'd be conducting a celebration rather than a protest, they cordoned off Broad St. all the way from City Hall to Locust St. a few blocks to the South.
As of 2:00pm on Monday the 9th, the President still hasn't conceded and it looks as though he'll keep up his assertions that the vote was somehow stolen from him. As CNN put it:
Election theft?Was the margin of victory close? No. Not really.
Trump alleged that unnamed opponents of his are "trying to steal an election" and "trying to rig an election."
Facts First: This is entirely baseless. This election is legitimate. Trump's opponents are not trying to steal it. Election officials are simply counting legally cast votes.
This was NOT an especially close election. #PresidentElectBiden won 306 EVs plus a 4-5 million-votes plurality. You want close? Look at 1960,1968,1976,2000, among others. NETWORKS—Stop feeding this false storyline.And y'know? When you feel the need to set up a voter fraud hotline, you're advertising that you don't have enough evidence to take to court in the first place!
Finally, on the assertion by Trump that there was something illegitimate about Biden's election, allied foreign leaders didn't hesitate to congratulate Biden.
There was some expectation that foreign leaders would wait until a Trump concession before congratulating Biden. The fact so many didn’t speaks to the momentum behind Biden and foreign assessments of Trump’s legal arguments.South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem makes it clear that she's firmly on the side of denial when it comes to the coronavirus as she launches into a critique of the nation allegedly rushing to judgements saying there were clerical errors and computer glitches and that random people have signed affadavits testifying to unspecified improper activities, but seriously? All of that is going to overturn a vote count of nearly five million? As of 2:00pm Monday afternoon, the count was 75.6 million (50.7%) for Biden and 71 million (47.6%) for Trump. The difference in Electoral votes is 290 to 214. These are not small differences.
Slate goes over all of the major figures of the Trump Administration, explaining why they will not be missed. The problem with ever writing a history of Ivanka Trump and her role in the Trump Administration is that pretty much everything of significance she did was behind closed doors with either family members, close friends, sycophants or yes-men to observe. We'll never get an objective history of whatever she did or said.
TPM reviews why the Trump Administration was so corrosive to democracy.
President-Elect Biden has a plan to tackle the coronavirus.
Good news! A Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech has a 90% success rate in preventing people from catching the coronavirus! This doesn't of course, mean that everything can reopen right away, but it is positive news! And well, we can use good news. Numbers of new cases in the US and in the rest of the world are skyrocketing. In the US, the first wave of infections never receded and just keeps getting bigger. In Europe, a second wave of the coronavirus has hit.
Starting at around the 7:00 minute mark, Biden begins his first official coronavirus briefing.
The press conference held by the President's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was an absolute, knee-slapping riot! Apparently, Trump declared to the media that they'd hold the conference at the Four Seasons hotel and we guess the hotel said no thank you, so the conference was held in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping company!
