While a majority of Republican congressional leaders have refused to publicly acknowledge that President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 election, they’re nevertheless pledging to block Biden’s cabinet appointees.
MSNBC News contributor Hugh Hewitt quoted Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, who said, “It is hard for me to imagine they would nominate Susan Rice [for Secretary of State].”
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton also told Hewitt, “I cannot imagine a Republican Senate confirming Susan Rice to any position.”
Rice served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.
Rice recently said that the Trump Administration’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s presidential victory has posed national security risks. “They are proceeding in a fashion that is reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible,” she said, calling the president’s actions”[The] most irresponsible leadership during a transition I think any of us have seen in our lifetimes if not in the history of the republic.”
It’s widely expected that Senate Republicans and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will try to block Biden’s cabinet nominees as “radicals” and “extreme lefitsts”, although Biden could bypass their GOP obstructionism by using the Vacancies Act and the recess appointment clause of the U.S. Constitution to seat his cabinet anyway.
While most congressional Republicans have been silent about acknowledging Biden’s presidential victory, at least three Republicans have publicly voiced doubt that Biden actually won including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah; former Republican President George W. Bush; his brother, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush; Republican Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan and 13 other Republican Congress members have all acknowledged that Biden won.