Facing pressure, Trump relents on starting transition

A pair of tweets may be as close to a concession as Trump will ever give.

• By Ayesha Rascoe and Tamara Keith/NPR

(Washington) — President Trump is still not conceding that he lost the election, but he’s getting closer.

Trump on Monday tweeted that he had directed the General Services Administration to begin the process of transferring the government to President-elect Joe Biden.

I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 23, 2020

Those tweets may be as close to a concession as Trump will ever give. He maintains that he will continue to fight the election results in court and later tweeted that he would “never concede.”

Even as vote counts in key states showed Trump behind Biden by thousands of votes, the president has taken unprecedented steps to contest the electoral outcome. He continued Tuesday to make unfounded allegations about the integrity of the process, and vowed more legal action.

Until Monday, GSA administrator Emily Murphy had declined to take the formal step to allow the Biden team to begin working with federal agencies to prepare for governing. But Trump and Murphy faced increasing pressure to kickstart the transition process.

The New York Times reported that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, all urged the president to allow the transition to begin. An administration official confirmed to NPR that Trump was being advised that it would be good for the country to at least start the process.

The shift comes as Trump’s nearly impossible path to overturning the election outcome looks even more improbable.

Over the weekend, a federal judge issued a blistering order, dismissing the Trump campaign’s bid to delay certification of votes in Pennsylvania. Biden leads Trump in the state by more than 81,000 votes.

Trump also failed to prevent the state of Michigan from certifying Biden’s win there.

More Republican lawmakers are also calling on Trump to accept the election results.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Trump should “put the country first and have a prompt and orderly transition.”

“When you are in public life, people remember the last thing you do,” Alexander said.

The move by GSA will allow the Biden transition team to access millions of dollars in federal funding, as well as to begin meeting with government agencies to discuss policy ahead of the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021.