Download the all-new Republic app:

Published 22:13 IST, November 22nd 2020

Everything Trump doing now is bad for American democracy: Biden's Chief of Staff

President-elect Joe Biden's Chief of Staff Ronald Klain on Sunday launched a scathing attack on President Donald Trump, saying American voters have rejected his leadership and everything the Republican leader is doing now is bad for the democracy of the US.

Follow: Google News Icon
  • share
null | Image: self
Advertisement

President-elect Joe Biden's Chief of Staff Ronald Klain on Sunday launched a scathing attack on President Donald Trump, saying American voters have rejected his leadership and everything the Republican leader is doing now is bad for the democracy of the US.

"I think he has definitely set back the democratic norm here in the United States. He's been doing that for four years, and that's ramped up since the election,” Klain told ABC News in an interview.

Advertisement

The voters rejected his leadership. A record number of Americans rejected the Trump presidency. And, since then, Donald Trump's been rejecting democracy. He has been launching baseless claims of voter fraud, baseless litigation. He's been rejected by 34 courts, and now these efforts to try to get election officials to overturn the will of the voters, he alleged.During his appearance on the Sunday talk show, the in-coming White House Chief of Staff launched the attack on Trump, who so far has refused to concede the November 3 presidential elections which has been won by Biden, the Democratic candidate, both in popular votes and electoral college.Trump has filed multiple lawsuit alleging that the elections were manipulated and there was large scale voters fraud.

"It's corrosive. It's harmful. But, as Mitt Romney said, it's not going to change the outcome of what happens here. At 12:00 noon on January 20, Joe Biden will become the next president of the US. Everything Donald Trump's doing now is bad for our democracy. It's bad for our position, our image in the world, but it's not going to change what happens here when we get a new president next year,” Klain said.

Advertisement

Biden, he said, is doing his job of bringing the country together.

Donald Trump's never going to change. He spent four years tearing this country apart, and it seems he's determined to spend the final days of his presidency doing the same thing, he said.Washington will always be the last place to change. What I saw this week with the president-elect's interactions with leaders from around the country is that outside of Washington, Democrats and Republicans are looking forward to what happens on January 20th. They want to work together to get things done. Now we have to get the job done here in D.C, he said.

Advertisement

The Trump Administration, has refused to provide support in the transition.

There are obviously parts of the transition that are in our control. We're picking people to work in the White House and to work in the cabinet. We're building our policy plans. We're having high level meetings with leaders from around the country. And so there's parts of transition that are proceeding at pace, and, in fact, proceeding at record setting pace, he said.

Advertisement

But there are other parts that are not in our control. The president-elect, the vice president-elect are not getting the kind of intelligence briefings they're entitled to. They're not getting -- we're not getting -- our transition isn't getting access to agency officials to help develop our plans, and there's a lot of focus on that vaccine rollout plan that's going to be critical in the early days of a Biden presidency, he added.

We have no access to that, and we're not getting background checks. We're not in a position to get background checks on cabinet nominees. And so there are definite impacts. Those impacts escalate every day, and I hope that the administrator of the GSA will do her job. The law only requires her to find who is the apparent victor of the election, and I can't imagine there's any dispute that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the presidential election, Klain said.

Exuding confidence that Biden would be in-charge of the country on January 20, Klain noted that this time it is not going to be the same kind of inauguration that they had in the past.

It's going to definitely have to be changed. We started some consultations with House and Senate leadership on that. Obviously, this is not going to be the same kind of inauguration we had in the past, he said.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are "going to try to have an inauguration that honours the importance and the symbolic meaning of the moment, but also does not result in the spread of disease. That's our goal,” Klain said in response to a question. 

(IMAGE CREDITS:Twitter/@RonaldKlain)

22:13 IST, November 22nd 2020