OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
President Joe Biden has reportedly invited President-elect Donald Trump to the White House next week so they can discuss how a transition will look ahead of the January inauguration.
Biden and Trump will meet on Wednesday at 11 a.m., according to the White House. Trump confirmed the meeting later on Saturday, while Biden said the transition would be “peaceful and orderly.”
“I will do my duty as president,” Biden said Thursday, according to Just the News. “I’ll fulfill my oath, and I will honor the Constitution. On Jan. 20, we will have a peaceful transfer of power here in America.”
The invite comes after Trump not only defeated Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris but, in doing so, won all of the battleground states while helping Republicans win historic victories in statehouses around the country.
Also, Republicans flipped the Senate back to GOP control and are on pace to keep the House, albeit with a still-small majority.
Trump’s resounding and equally historic victory — he becomes only the second president after Grover Cleveland in the late 1800’s to win two non-consecutive terms — has led to some panic, finger-pointing, and name-calling within the Democratic Party.
His massive victory likely signals the beginning of the end of influence over Democratic politics by aged leaders like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
Pelosi, “who for decades reigned as kingmaker in her party, facing the prospect of having her status as a power player in the party unceremoniously stripped away on the back of” Harris’ defeat, the UK’s DailyMail.com reports.
The shocking decline occurs just months after her key involvement in efforts to push President Joe Biden out of the race.
The 84-year-old Pelosi was visibly emotional during Harris’s concession speech at Howard University on Wednesday and was seen engaged in a heated exchange with fellow Democratic insider and former DNC boss Donna Brazile, the outlet reported.
As the blame game intensifies in the wake of the vice president’s surprising defeat, Pelosi finds herself at the center of the accusations, DailyMail.com noted further.
“The influences of a [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer or a Pelosi or a movie star or an Obama deciding to anoint somebody – those guys are gone,” business investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary said this week.
“In four years, they won’t have that kind of influence,” he added in a thinly veiled reference to actor George Clooney, who famously and publicly called on Biden to end his reelection following a disastrous debate with Trump.
Some Republicans are directly attributing the significant Democratic losses—from the top of the ticket to the Senate flipping red and the House still in contention—specifically to Pelosi.
“You’ve got to blame Nancy Pelosi,” former GOP House Speaker and fellow Californian Kevin McCarthy said during a Fox News interview this week.
Pelosi has been widely recognized as a key figure in Biden’s July decision to withdraw from the race just months before Election Day.
McCarthy also stated that the effort constituted an attack on the democratic process, as primary voters across the country cast their ballots for Biden, only to see Harris emerge as their nominee.
“Joe Biden never should have ran for office. I knew it when I sat with him. There was something wrong with him,” McCarthy said.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fed into the irrational fear-mongering many in her Democratic Party have been using to denounce President-elect Donald Trump’s massive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, making irrational claims about entering a period of “fascism” and “authoritarianism.”
The New York Democrat posted a message to followers on her social media accounts when it became apparent that Trump would win Tuesday evening.
