Republican Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) on Monday evening joined a small cohort of GOP senators who are finally beginning to refer to President-elect Joe Biden as the leader of the incoming administration amid President Donald Trump’s electoral loss.
NPR reported that Rubio made the call when asked by a group of pool reporters about talk of the possibility that Sen. Angus King (I-ME), may be up for consideration as the next Director of National Intelligence in the Biden administration.
“Well, that’ll be the President-elect’s decision obviously,” Rubio said Monday.
Rubio joins a small but growing group of Republican senators who have broken with a majority in their party by recognizing Biden as the President-elect, including Sens. Mitt Romney (UT), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME) and Ben Sasse (NE) who have each congratulated Biden on his win.
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) was among the first to call for the shift of power to get underway by saying last week that a “transition process ought to begin” even as President Trump continued efforts to slow that process.
Rubio’s comments on Monday were a further pivot from those made by many of his GOP colleagues who have stopped short of acknowledging Biden’s win by invoking President Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud that has taken the form of battles that are quickly falling flat in court.
“Ultimately that’s what the results, the preliminary results, seem to indicate. You certainly have to anticipate if that’s the highest likelihood at this point,” Rubio said.
Rubio’s remarks, which offered a less than optimistic view of Trump’s likelihood of prevailing in fizzling court cases, seemed to be echoed by GOP colleague, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD).
“Right now, it looks like it will be President Biden,” Rounds said when asked about Trump’s legal woes. “We understand that.”
