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 Mr. 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 Mr. Trump’s demands for big-ticket defense 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. Mr. 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 Mr. 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.
Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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.
Courtesy- Newyork Times
