Inside the wrought-iron fences that surround the 18-acre White House complex, the 2020 election rages on, with President Trump angrily refusing to concede. But the rest of the world — and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr — is moving on.
The leaders of western Europe have called Biden, as has the President of the world’s rising superpower, Xi Jinping of China.
PayPal’s chief executive extended his “warmest congratulations to President-Elect Joe Biden, who will become the 46th President of the U.S.A.” The Boeing Corporation, which benefited from Trump’s demands for big-ticket defence items, issued a statement on Friday saying, “We look forward to working with the Biden administration.”
It is as if the vast machinery of diplomacy, business and lobbying has suddenly been recalibrated for the Biden era. Trump, by far the dominant world figure for the past four years, is increasingly treated as irrelevant.
Bank trade groups have begun meeting with Biden aides in anticipation of new fights over regulation. Foreign diplomats assuming a sharp turn in American foreign policy are retooling their agendas. Corporate executives, who are usually allergic to political statements, are saying out loud what most of Trump’s supporters have so far refused to acknowledge.
“Vice-President Biden was fairly elected as our next President, and it’s time for the transition to proceed,” said Larry Merlo, the chief executive of CVS Health.
Biden is seizing the moment, not to aggressively confront the President he defeated, but to act presidential in his stead. Even as he demands that an orderly transfer of power be allowed to begin, the President-elect is proceeding as if the political drama created by Trump amounts to little more than noise — or what his new chief of staff called the “hysterics” of a lame-duck President.
A senior Biden official called Trump’s intransigence irritating, but aides said they were not alarmed. They have become resigned to the President’s denialism, have no expectation he will ever admit he lost and are willing to employ all legal options to ensure the transition goes forward.
But they are also preparing for the possibility that he will not allow the gears of a formal transition to engage because that would amount to an acknowledgment that he lost.
Directing his sprawling transition remotely from his home in Delaware, Biden and his aides are moving swiftly to set up the next administration by announcing senior members of his White House staff and moving on to nominating cabinet secretaries next week.
Policy experts are developing plans for what Biden can do as soon as he is inaugurated.
The growing acceptance that there will be a new President is taking place against the backdrop of a pandemic that has hit the US particularly hard, killing more than 253,000 people on Trump’s watch. But it is Biden, not the sitting President, who is determined to keep the focus on the threat from the coronavirus.
On Friday, Trump made a brief public announcement about efforts to lower drug prices, ranted on Twitter about the election and met Republican state lawmakers from Michigan as he desperately sought to strong-arm local officials who he believes are his last hope of closing his Electoral College deficit.
Biden continued to press his case for more aggressive action to confront the health crisis, meeting the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to begin discussing negotiations on another stimulus package to help businesses recover and to provide additional funding for states and local governments struggling with the cost of the nearly yearlong response.
On Thursday, the President-elect hosted a virtual meeting with five Democratic governors and five Republican governors in an effort to demonstrate the need for bipartisan cooperation, especially on the pandemic. After the meeting, Biden said Republican leaders seemed eager to work together.
New York Times News Service
