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Trump has yet to accept the election results months after Republicans said he would


“Let me be very clear to you: It will be peaceful,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said.

“If Republicans lose, we will accept that result,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News. “ … If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Joe Biden, I will accept that result.”

“I think that the president will accept the result, but you’ve got to make sure that it’s fair,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said.

Since then, Trump and the vast majority of congressional Republicans have yet to publicly accept the results of the presidential election nearly two months after it was called for Joe Biden. You can watch examples of Republicans promising that the president would accept the results of the election in the video above.

Among the roughly three dozen congressional Republicans who have publicly acknowledged Biden’s win, many waited days or weeks after the election was called before doing so. It was a stark departure from the public congratulations that many of those same Republicans gave to then-President-elect Trump in the hours and days after the 2016 election was called.

That so many elected Republicans still refuse to accept the election’s outcome is perhaps not surprising, given how many Trump supporters falsely think that Biden did not legitimately win the election.

McConnell and Tillis eventually acknowledged Biden’s win, weeks after the election was called.

But they’re still in the minority. On Nov. 4, the day after the election, McCarthy told reporters that he would accept the election results once they were certified by the states that were still counting votes. The last of six key swing states certified Biden’s win on Nov. 30.

McCarthy has yet to accept those results. He is among more than 200 congressional Republicans who have yet to publicly acknowledge Biden’s victory, even after the electoral college sealed Biden’s win in its Dec. 14 meeting. Instead, nearly two-thirds of them signed onto a lawsuit asking the Supreme Court essentially to overturn Biden’s win. (The Supreme Court said no.)

Congress has one official role in all of this next week. On Jan. 6 lawmakers will count the electoral college results and confirm Biden’s win. More than a dozen House Republicans at least one Republican senator will challenge the results submitted by several states that Trump lost. They are being egged on by Trump, who has tried at every turn of the process to overturn his loss. He has even asked advisers about declaring martial law to overturn the results. (He can’t.)

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