Biden says he expects to speak to McConnell soon

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that expects to speak with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the near future.

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to Mitch. My expectation is that I will do that in the not too distant future,” Biden told reporters following a speech on health care in Wilmington, Del.

Biden was asked to respond to McConnell’s refusal to recognize the outcome of the election. McConnell has not acknowledged Biden as the winner and backed President Trump’s legal efforts to challenge the results in various states.

Only a handful of Republicans have recognized Biden as the winner in the White House race.

Biden, who served alongside McConnell when he was a senator, said Tuesday that he believed Republicans have been “intimidated” by 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. But there is only one president at a time. He is president,” Biden said. 

The president-elect said he hoped to speak with McConnell sometime before electors meet in mid-December. 

In a statement on the Senate floor Monday, McConnell defended Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results in the courts.

“Obviously no states have yet certified their election results. We have at least one or two states that are already on track for a recount and I believe the president may have legal challenges underway in at least five states,” McConnell said. 

“President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” McConnell continued, citing the Supreme Court’s decision stopping a recount in Florida during the 2000 presidential contest that resulted in a victory for former President George W. Bush. 

Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on Saturday, after edging Trump out in a handful of key battleground states. Trump and his campaign have raised allegations of voter fraud but have not produced evidence to back up their claims. The campaign has filed a handful of lawsuits in key states, some of which have been dismissed.

Even if they proved successful, it appears highly unlikely that the president’s efforts would change the outcome of the race.