proofedSenator Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader, slammed Democrats for expecting the president to quickly concede and said he had every right to pursue legal challenges.
Leading Republicans rallied on Monday around President Trump’s refusal to concede the election, declining to challenge the false narrative that it was stolen from him or to recognise President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory even as party divisions burst into public view.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the top Republican in Congress, threw his support behind Mr. Trump in a sharply worded speech on the Senate floor.
He declared that Mr Trump was “100 per cent within his rights” to turn to the legal system to challenge the outcome and hammered Democrats for expecting the president to concede.
In his first public remarks since Mr Biden was declared the winner, Mr McConnell celebrated the success of Republicans who won election to the House and the Senate. But in the next breath, he treated the outcome of the presidential election — based on the same ballots that elected those Republicans — as unknown.
“President Trump is 100 per cent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” said Mr McConnell, the majority leader.
“Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”
The intraparty feuding underscored how political considerations around Georgia, whose two Senate contests will most likely decide control of the chamber two weeks before Inauguration Day, are driving Republicans’ calculations about how to handle the election results.
Republican leaders are reluctant to make any move that might alienate Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters and hurt their candidates’ chances. That includes appearing to bow to the reality that he has lost before the president himself is ready to do so.
There was little sign on Monday that would happen in the near term. Mr. Trump’s team rolled out its latest legal moves to challenge the outcome in key states.
And in Washington, Emily W. Murphy, a Trump political appointee and administrator of the General Services Administration, refused to formally recognize Mr Biden as the president-elect with a letter of “ascertainment,” leaving the country’s transition of power in flux. -BBC
