Trump friend and adviser Steve Schwarzman recognizes Biden as President-elect
President Donald Trump’s friends and allies are increasingly doing what he will not: acknowledging the reality that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States.
Steve Schwarzman, a Trump confidant and Blackstone Group CEO, became the latest Trump ally to recognize Biden as President-elect and publicly signal to Trump that it is time to move on, speaking out a day after another Trump friend and adviser, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, called Trump’s legal team a “national embarrassment.”
“The outcome is very certain today and the country should move on,” Schwarzman said Monday in a statement provided to CNN. “I supported President Trump and the strong economic path he built. Like many in the business community, I am ready to help President-elect Biden and his team as they confront the significant challenges of rebuilding our post-COVID economy.”
Schwarzman’s statement adds to the slowly rising pressure Trump is facing to admit defeat in the 2020 election, nearly three weeks after the last ballots were cast and following a mountain of legal defeats the President and his allies have faced in the courts. Schwarzman, who served as a trusted adviser to Trump on trade matters with China, had reportedly defended Trump’s initial vow to challenge the results of the election on a call with fellow CEOs days after the election.
Christie slammed Trump’s legal team on Sunday saying, “it’s the country that has to come first.”
“I voted for him twice. But elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen,” Christie said Sunday on ABC.
Beyond Christie and Schwarzman, more Republican elected officials are also coming to terms with Trump’s defeat and calling on the President to do the same.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania recognized Biden’s election on Saturday night after Trump’s last-ditch effort to stop Pennsylvania from certifying the results of the election was dismissed by a federal judge.
And even Republican officials who have yet to acknowledge Biden’s win are calling on Trump to allow the transition to proceed and warning him he must recognize defeat if he cannot make his case in court.
“If the President cannot prove these claims or demonstrate that they would change the election result, he should fulfill his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by respecting the sanctity of our electoral process,” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming said Saturday in the strongest statement to date from a member of House GOP leadership.
