Donald Trump was declared the winner early Sunday in Arizona, completing Republicans’ clean sweep of the so-called swing states and rubbing salt in Democrats’ wounds when it was announced that the president-elect would meet with Joe Biden at the congress. The White House will discuss the presidential handover on Wednesday.
In a national campaign that was expected to be extremely close but ended up winning handily, the result in Arizona gives Trump 312 electoral college votes, compared to Kamala Harris’ 226. The state joins the other Sun belt swing states – Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina. Carolina – and the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that vote Republican. Everyone was expected to be extremely competitive, but they all went for Trump, albeit by fairly small margins.
Republicans have also regained control of the Senate – they have 53 seats to Democrats’ 46 – and appear likely to retain control of the House of Representatives, where 21 races have still not been called, but Republicans currently have a 212-202 advantage, giving them a “trifecta.” ” – both the houses of Congress and the presidency – allowing them to rule largely unfettered for the next two years.
The political realignment comes after a nail-biting election that paved the way for the Democratic party to reevaluate a platform that seemed to have been rejected by a majority of American voters. Trump also won the popular vote, the first time a Republican has done so since George W. Bush in 2004, after the September 11 attacks a few years earlier.
At Biden’s request, Trump will visit the Oval Office on Wednesday, a formality that Trump himself failed to observe in 2020 when he lost the presidency to Biden but refused to accept the outcome.
In a speech last week, Biden said he would “direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition.”
But as newly elected president, Trump has reportedly not yet submitted a series of transition agreements with the Biden administration, including ethics pledges to avoid conflicts of interest. The agreements are needed to release briefings from the outgoing government ahead of the transfer of power in 72 days.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden will brief Trump on foreign policy on Wednesday, telling CBS Face the Nation: “The president will have a chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things.”
Asked whether Biden will ask lawmakers to approve additional aid for Ukraine before he leaves office, Sullivan said the president “will argue that we need continued resources for Ukraine beyond the end of his term.” Trump allies have said the new administration’s focus would be peace and not territory.
Sullivan also said the international community must “increase pressure on Hamas to come to the table to make a deal in Gaza because the Israeli government has said it is willing to take a temporary step in that direction,” as the group had told mediators, he said it “will not enter into a ceasefire and hostage agreement at this time.”
The political consequences of Trump’s victory continue to reverberate, not least in the Democratic camp. It is estimated that the Harris-Walz campaign spent $1 billion in three months, but is now reportedly $20 million in debt.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz told ABC News’ This Week that whoever “told” Harris to focus on Trump during her presidential campaign had “committed political malfeasance.”
“We all know what Trump is,” Luntz said. “We experienced him for four years.”
Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders, who votes with Democrats, defended Harris’ campaign and declined to be drawn into further analysis of whether Biden should have abandoned his re-election bid sooner.
“I don’t want to get involved,” he told CNN. “We have to look ahead and not behind. Kamala did her best. She came in and won the debate with Trump. She worked as hard as she could.”
“This is the reality: the working class of this country is angry, and they have reason to be angry,” he added. “We live in an economy today where the people at the top are doing phenomenally well, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have not explained why Trump and many in the party claim last week’s election was free and fair but insist the 2020 election was somehow rigged, despite every lawsuit alleging fraud rejected.
Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called Trump’s victory last week the “greatest political comeback.”
On Friday, Jordan and fellow Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk sent a letter to Special Counsel Jack Smith demanding that his office preserve records of the Justice Department’s prosecutions of Trump.
Related: A special US prosecutor will settle the criminal cases against Donald Trump
When asked by CNN whether Trump would go after his political opponents, Jordan said: “He didn’t do it in his first term. The Democrats went after him and everyone understands what they did.”
“I don’t think any of that will happen,” Jordan reiterated. “We are the party that is against political persecution. We are the party that is against going after your opponents using the law.”
Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman from Florida, told Fox News that claims about a list were “lies from the Democratic left.”
“I will tell you that this is not something that Donald Trump has ever talked about or committed to. There is no enemies list,” Donalds said. Trump has regularly referred to his political opponents as “the enemy within.”
