US President-elect Joe Biden will name on Tuesday the first picks to be part of his administration, his chief of staff said, even as Donald Trump continues to evoke unsubstantiated fraud and to insist he defeated the Democrat.
That announcement underscored Biden’s preparations to assume the presidency in January despite Trump’s moves – efforts increasingly seen as futile even by many Republicans – to try to undo the results of the November 3 vote.
“You are going to see the first of the president-elect’s cabinet picks on Tuesday of this week,” Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
A growing number of senior Republican figures have either recognized Biden’s victory or at least urged the head of the General Services Administration – the usually low-profile agency that manages the federal bureaucracy – to release federal funds for the Biden transition.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who served as an advisor during the Trump transition, said on ABC that the president’s spate of legal challenges was a “national embarrassment.”
Trump again tweeted on Sunday about “massive and unprecedented fraud,” an assertion Trump lawyers have failed to substantiate.
“Fight hard Republicans,” Trump said in another tweet.
Biden won the state-by-state Electoral College votes that ultimately decide who takes the White House by 306 to 232.
The Electoral College is due to formally vote on December 14, with certifications to take place beforehand.
States’ certification of results of their popular votes is usually routine following a US presidential election.
But Trump’s refusal to concede has complicated the process and drawn concerns that he could cause long-term damage to Americans’ trust in their voting system.
Meanwhile, Biden has so far moderated his criticism of Trump’s actions, though he has spoken of “incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions,” adding: “It’s hard to fathom how this man thinks.”
