In a virtual meeting with health care workers, President-elect Joe Biden said his transition “should be further along” and President Donald Trump refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election could harm the response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden said the Trump administration is withholding key information about personal protective equipment (PPE) and other key facts that could damage his response to the virus.
“There’s a whole lot of things that are just – we just don’t have available to us, which unless made available soon, we’re going to be behind by weeks or months,” Biden said.
Biden went on the blame the Trump administration for not following law for a peaceful and cooperative transition between presidents.
“What we’re having now is the failure of the administration to recognize what the law says,” he said.
More importantly, the Biden team is being left in the dark about the plan for distributing vaccines as they become available. Earlier this week, two companies have announced positive results from large-scale clinical trials.
Last week, Mr. Trump provided an update on “Operation Warp Speed” and discussed the process in the future of the vaccine distributed by the US military.
Biden went on to say he was hopeful Republicans in Congress will be more willing to send funding to state and local governments after Trump leaves office.
“Hopefully, when he’s gone, they’ll be more willing to do what they know should be done, has to be done, in order to save the communities they live in,” Biden said.
The country is currently in the middle of its third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, killing over 250,000 people.
Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration must “ascertain” the election to begin the transition process but has not yet done so. Despite winning the Electoral College 306-232, the President is refusing to concede.
“She’s going to make an ascertainment when the winner is clear, as laid out in the Constitution,” a GSA spokeswoman said before Biden’s Wednesday remarks.
