Joe Biden has finally claimed his victory over Donald Trump.
Speaking after the Electoral College voted on Monday, Biden blamed the President for refusing to accept the fact of his defeat.
“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,” Biden said. “We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And so now it is time to turn the page. To unite. To heal.”
Biden noted that he won 306 electoral votes, the same as Trump in 2016, “At the time, President Trump called his Electoral College tally a landslide. By his own standards, these numbers represented a clear victory then, and I respectfully suggest they do so now.”
At another point, Biden took an indirect shot at Trump saying, “The flame of democracy had been kindled in this nation a long time ago. And now we know that nothing—not even a pandemic, or an abuse of power—can extinguish that flame.”
He added, “In America, when questions are raised about the legitimacy of elections, those questions are resolved through the legal processes. And that’s precisely what happened here. All the counts were confirmed … none of this has stopped baseless claims.”
Later, Biden observed that “respecting the will of the people is at the heart of our democracy,” adding that when Trump won four years ago, “it was my responsibility to announce the tally of the Electoral College votes to the joint session of Congress … I did my job.”