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President-elect Biden urges unity against virus as President Trump stokes fading embers of campaign

my fellow Americans. Thanksgiving is a special time in America, a time to reflect on what the year has brought to think about what lies ahead. You know, our first National Day of Thanksgiving, authorized by the Continental Congress, took place on December 18th, 17 77 was celebrated by General George Washington and his troops with Gulf Mills on the way to Valley Forge. It took place under extremely harsh conditions and deprivation. Lacking food, clothing, shelter, they’re preparing to ride out a long, hard winter. Today you can find a plaque in Gulf Mills marking that moment. Here’s what the plaque greed that says this Thanksgiving, in spite of the suffering showed the reverence and character that was forging the soul of the nation, forging the soul of the nation. Faith, courage, sacrifice, service to country service to each other and gratitude, even in the face of suburb, have long been part of what Thanksgiving means in America. No looking back over our history, you see that it’s been in the most difficult circumstances that the soul of our nation has been forged, and now we find ourselves again facing a long, hard winter. We fought nearly year long battle with the virus that has devastated this nation has brought us pain and loss and frustration has cost so many lives. 260,000 Americans and counting is divided US. Angered us, set us against one. I know the country has grown weary of the fight. We need to remember we’re at war with the virus, not with one another, not with each other. This is the moment where we need to steal our spines, redouble our efforts and recommit ourselves to the fight. Let’s remember, we’re all in this together. Sounds trite to say, but we’re all in this together. For so many of us, it’s hard to hear this fight isn’t over. We still have months of this battle ahead of us. For those who’ve lost a loved one, I know that this time of year could be especially difficulty. Believe me, I know I remember that first Thanksgiving, the empty chair of silence. Take your breath away. It’s really hard to care. It’s hard to give thanks. It’s hard to even think of looking forward. It’s so hard to hope, I understand, can be thinking and praying for each and every one of you this Thanksgiving. That’s your Thanksgiving table because we’ve been there this year. We’re asking America’s to forego so many of the traditions that we’ve long made this holiday, which made it so special for our families. For 40 such years, 40 some years we’ve had a tradition. I’m traveling over Thanksgiving tradition that we’ve kept every year save one year our son Bodi. But this year we’ll be staying home. We’ve always had a big family gatherings. Thanks, Kimmy. Kids, grandkids, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and more. For the Bidens, the days around Thanksgiving has always been a time to remember all we had to be grateful for in a time to begin to think about Christmas and begin even to do the Christmas list. But this year, because we care so much for each other, we’re gonna be having a separate Thanksgiving for Jill and I will be at our home in Delaware with our daughter and our son in law. Rest of the family will be doing the same thing in small groups, so I know I know how hard it is to forgo family traditions, but it’s so very important. Our country is in the middle of a dramatic spike in cases. We’re now averaging 160,000 new cases a day. No, we’ll be surprised if we hit 200,000 cases in a single day, many local health systems at risk of being overwhelmed. That’s the plain and simple truth. Nothing made up. It’s really and I believe you always deserve to hear the truth here. The truth from your president. We have to try to slow the growth of this virus. We owe it to the doctors and the nurses and other frontline workers. Care workers who have risked their lives, some lost their lives put so much on the line in the heroic battle in this virus against it for so long. You know, we owe that to our fellow citizens who need access the hospital beds care to fight this disease. We owe it to one another. It’s literally are patriotic duties Americans. It means wearing a mask, keeping social distancing, limiting the size of any group were in. Until we have a vaccine, he’s the most effective tools to combat the virus. Starting on day one of my presidency, we will take steps that will change the course of this disease. MAWR TESTING. We’ll find people with cases and get them away from one another, slowing the number of infections, more protective gear for businesses in our schools. To do the same. Reducing the number of cases clear guidance will get more businesses and more schools open. We all have a role to play beating this crisis. The federal government has vast powers to combat the virus, and I commit to you. I will use all of those powers the lead, a national coordinated response. But but the federal government can’t do this alone. Each of us has a responsibility in our own lives. Do what we can do to slow the virus. Every decision we make matters, every decision we make and save lives. None of these steps we’re asking people to take our political statements. Every one of them is based on science. Riel science. Well, the good news is there has been significant record breaking progress made recently in developing a vaccine, and several of these vaccines look extraordinarily effective. It happens that we’re on track for the first immunization to begin by late December early January. Then we’ll need to put in place a distribution plan to get the entire country immunized as soon as possible, which we will do, but it’s gonna take time. I’m hoping the news of the vaccine will serve as an incentive to every American to take these simple steps to get control of the virus. There’s really hope, tangible hope. So hang on. Don’t let yourself surrender to the fatigue, which I understand it. Israel fatigue. I know we can, and we will beat this virus. America is not gonna lose this war. We’ll get our lives back. Life is going to return to normal. I promise you, this will happen. This will not last forever. So, yes, it’s been a really hard year, particularly hard for over 250,000 people in their families. But I still believe we have much to be thankful for. There’s so much to hopeful, much to build on, much to dream up. Here’s America, I see, and I believe it’s the American You CIA’s well, America, the faces fax in America that overcomes challenges in America that way seek justice and equality for all people. America’s holds fast to the conviction that out of paying comes possibility. Out of frustration comes progress and out of division unity. You all know in our finest hours that’s who we’ve always been. That’s what we shall be again for. I believe that this grim season division demonization is going to give way to a year of light and immunity. Why do I think so? Because America is a nation not of adversaries but of neighbors not of limitations but of possibilities not of dreams deferred but of dreams realized. I’ve said many times that this is a great country. We’re a good people, This is the United States of America, and there’s never been anything we’ve been unable to do when we’ve done it together. Think of what we come through as a nation. How many things we’ve come through. Centuries of human enslavement, cataclysmic Civil war, exclusion of women from the battle box, World wars, Jim Crow belong twilight struggle against Soviet tyranny that could have ended not in the fall of the Berlin Wall but a nuclear Armageddon. Look, I’m not naive. I know that history is just that history. But to know what came before would come before what’s happened before can help arm us against despair. Knowing that previous generations got through the same universal human challenges that we face the tension between selfishness and generosity between fear and hope, between division and unity. And what what was it that brought the reality of America into closer alignment with the promise of reality, Justice and prosperity? Sounds corny, but it was love, plain and simple. Love of country, love of one another. We don’t talk much about loving our politics. The political. The political ring is too loud, too angry, too heated to love. Our neighbor as ourselves is a radical act. It is what we’re called to do. We must try for Onley in trying on Lian listening Onley in seeing ourselves is bound together and what Dr King called the mutual garment of destiny. Can we rise above two visions and truly heal? Look, we all know America is never perfect. We’ve always tried toe fulfill the aspiration of the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal, created in the image of God that we’ve always sought to form A more perfect union. What should we give thanks for this season? Well, first must be thankful for democracy itself. Listen, in this last election, one that just took place. We’ve seen record numbers. Americans exercise the most sacred right that of the vote to register their will at the ballot box. Think about that in the middle of a pandemic. Mawr People voted this year than have ever voted in the history of the United States America. Over 150 million people cast a ballot simply extraordinary, many waiting in line. 5678 hours to vote. If you want to know what beats deep in the heart of America, it’s this democracy, the right to determine our lives, our government and our leaders, the right to be heard Our democracy has tested this year. What we learned is this. The people of this nation are up to the task. In America, we have full and fair and free elections. And then we honor the results. The people of this nation, the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else. Through the vote, the Nobelist instrument of nonviolent protests ever conceived. We remained a new and we’re reminded a new that progress is possible that we, the people, we, the people, have the power to change, which Jefferson called the course of human events with our hearts on our hands and our voices today we can be better than yesterday and tomorrow we can be still better than that day. You know, we should be thankful to that America is a covenant unfolding story. We have what we need to create prosperity, opportunity, injustice. Americans have grit and generosity, a capacity for greatness and reservoirs of goodness. We have what it takes. Now we have to act. This is our moment. Ours together to write a newer, bolder, more compassionate chapter. The life of nation. Work ahead is not gonna be easy. It will not be quick. You want solutions, not shouting Reason, not hyper partisanship light, not heat. You want us to hear one another, see one another again, respect one another again. You want Democrats and Republicans and independents to come together and work together. And that, my friends, is what I’m determined to do. Americans dream big. As hard as it may seem this Thanksgiving, we’re going to dream big again. Our future is bright. The fact we’ve never been I’ve never been more optimistic about the future America than I am right now. I honest to God believe the 21st century is going to be an American century. We’re gonna build an economy that leads the world. We’re gonna lead the world by the power of our example, not just the example of our power. We’re gonna lead the world on climate and save this planet. We’re gonna find cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s and diabetes. I promise you, we’re gonna finally root out systemic racism in this country on this Thanksgiving in anticipation of all the Thanksgiving is to come. Let’s dream again. Let’s committee. Let’s commit ourselves to thinking not only of ourselves, but of others as well. For if we care for one another, if we open our arms rather than brandishing our fists, we can with the help of God, heal. And if we do And I’m sure we can we can claim but promised with the promise Who wrote these following words? The Lord is my strength and my shield. And with my song I give thanks to him I give thanks now for you for the trust you placed in me together will lift our voices in the coming months and years And our song shall be off Lives saved, breaches repaired a nation made whole again. Folks from the Biden family to yours wherever and however you may be celebrating. We wish you a happy Thanksgiving. May God bless you. May God protect our troops. Happy Thanksgiving.

President-elect Biden urges unity against virus as President Trump stokes fading embers of campaign

On a day of grace and grievance, President-elect Joe Biden summoned Americans on Wednesday to join in common purpose against the coronavirus pandemic and their political divisions while the man he will replace stoked the fading embers of his campaign to “turn the election over.”Biden, in a Thanksgiving-eve address to the nation, put the surging pandemic front and center, pledging to tap the “vast powers” of the federal government and to “change the course of the disease” once in office. But for that to work, he said, Americans must step up for their own safety and that of their fellow citizens.“I know the country has grown weary of the fight,” Biden said. “We need to remember we’re at war with the virus, not with one another. Not with each other.” President Donald Trump, who has scarcely mentioned the pandemic in recent days even as it has achieved record heights, remained fixated on his election defeat.He sent his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other members of his legal team to meet Pennsylvania Republican state senators in Gettysburg. Inside a hotel near the hallowed battlefields of civil war, they again aired complaints about the election and repeated allegations of Democratic malfeasance that have already disintegrated under examination by courts.“We have to turn the election over,” Trump said from the Oval Office, where he joined the meeting by speakerphone.“This was an election that we won easily,” he said. “We won it by a lot.” In fact, the election gave Biden a clear mandate, and no systemic fraud has been uncovered. Judge after judge has dismissed the Trump campaign’s accusations as baseless, and the transition to Biden’s presidency is fully underway.Nevertheless, Trump repeated: “This election has to be turned around.”Trump had been expected to appear in person in Gettysburg, but did not after another member of his legal team tested positive for the coronavirus. Few at the meeting wore masks.Altogether, the forum heard — and cheered — yet another declaration from a U.S. president seeking to reverse a democratic election and the voters’ will. The setting was about a mile from the scene of Pickett’s Charge, where Union troops repelled a desperate Confederate attack in July 1863 and helped turn the tide of the Civil War.The president followed up by pardoning former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the second Trump associate convicted in the Russia probe to be granted clemency by Trump.The pardon was part of a broader effort to undo the results of an investigation that for years has shadowed Trump’s administration and yielded criminal charges against a half dozen associates. The pardon voids the criminal case against Flynn just as a federal judge was deciding whether to grant a Justice Department request to dismiss the prosecution despite Flynn’s own guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts. For his part, Biden has largely projected serenity as the necessary elements of a presidential transition — money, access to office space and more — were held at bay for nearly three weeks by Trump’s machinations and a delayed ascertainment by the General Services Administration that he had won the election. On Wednesday, he addressed Trump’s raw tactics only in passing.“Our democracy was tested this year,” Biden said, “but the people of this nation are up to the task.”“In America, we have full and fair and free elections, and then we honor the results,” he said. “The people of this nation and the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else.”And he offered an optimistic vision, calling on Americans to “dream again” and predicting that “the 21st century is going to be an American century.”Biden pledged more virus testing, more protective gear and clearer guidance for businesses and schools to reopen when he becomes president. Until vaccines are distributed, he said, masks, social distancing and limits in the size of gatherings “are our most effective tools to combat the virus.”Biden’s remarks came as COVID-19 cases are surging nationwide. Hospitalizations, deaths and the testing positivity rate were also up sharply as the nation headed into Thanksgiving, and public health experts have warned that the large family gatherings expected for the holiday are likely to extend and exacerbate the surge.He has formed a coronavirus advisory board of scientists, doctors and public health experts, and plans to establish a COVID-19 coordinator in the White House to lead his administration’s response.This week, however, Biden focused beyond the crisis stateside and unveiled his national security team on Tuesday, including his nominees for secretary of state, director of national intelligence and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Drawing implicit contrasts with Trump, Biden said the team “reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” He’s also expected to name Janet Yellen as treasury secretary in the coming weeks.In urging Americans to be vigilant in their Thanksgiving plans, Biden said Wednesday he was taking precautions of his own, eschewing his traditional large family gathering and spending the holiday instead with just his wife, daughter and son-in-law.He’s traveling with his wife, Jill, to Rehoboth Beach, the small Delaware beach town where the two have a vacation home. That’s where they’ll host their family for Thanksgiving dinner. Biden is expected to stay through the weekend in Rehoboth before returning to Wilmington for further work on the transition.Trump will forgo his usual plans to celebrate Thanksgiving at his private club in Florida and will instead remain at the White House.

WILMINGTON, Del. —

Biden, in a Thanksgiving-eve address to the nation, put the surging pandemic front and center, pledging to tap the “vast powers” of the federal government and to “change the course of the disease” once in office. But for that to work, he said, Americans must step up for their own safety and that of their fellow citizens.

“I know the country has grown weary of the fight,” Biden said. “We need to remember we’re at war with the virus, not with one another. Not with each other.”

President Donald Trump, who has scarcely mentioned the pandemic in recent days even as it has achieved record heights, remained fixated on his election defeat.

He sent his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other members of his legal team to meet Pennsylvania Republican state senators in Gettysburg. Inside a hotel near the hallowed battlefields of civil war, they again aired complaints about the election and repeated allegations of Democratic malfeasance that have already disintegrated under examination by courts.

“We have to turn the election over,” Trump said from the Oval Office, where he joined the meeting by speakerphone.

“This was an election that we won easily,” he said. “We won it by a lot.” In fact, the election gave Biden a clear mandate, and no systemic fraud has been uncovered. Judge after judge has dismissed the Trump campaign’s accusations as baseless, and the transition to Biden’s presidency is fully underway.

Nevertheless, Trump repeated: “This election has to be turned around.”

Trump had been expected to appear in person in Gettysburg, but did not after another member of his legal team tested positive for the coronavirus. Few at the meeting wore masks.

Altogether, the forum heard — and cheered — yet another declaration from a U.S. president seeking to reverse a democratic election and the voters’ will. The setting was about a mile from the scene of Pickett’s Charge, where Union troops repelled a desperate Confederate attack in July 1863 and helped turn the tide of the Civil War.

The president followed up by pardoning former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the second Trump associate convicted in the Russia probe to be granted clemency by Trump.

The pardon was part of a broader effort to undo the results of an investigation that for years has shadowed Trump’s administration and yielded criminal charges against a half dozen associates. The pardon voids the criminal case against Flynn just as a federal judge was deciding whether to grant a Justice Department request to dismiss the prosecution despite Flynn’s own guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.

For his part, Biden has largely projected serenity as the necessary elements of a presidential transition — money, access to office space and more — were held at bay for nearly three weeks by Trump’s machinations and a delayed ascertainment by the General Services Administration that he had won the election. On Wednesday, he addressed Trump’s raw tactics only in passing.

“Our democracy was tested this year,” Biden said, “but the people of this nation are up to the task.”

“In America, we have full and fair and free elections, and then we honor the results,” he said. “The people of this nation and the laws of the land won’t stand for anything else.”

And he offered an optimistic vision, calling on Americans to “dream again” and predicting that “the 21st century is going to be an American century.”

Biden pledged more virus testing, more protective gear and clearer guidance for businesses and schools to reopen when he becomes president. Until vaccines are distributed, he said, masks, social distancing and limits in the size of gatherings “are our most effective tools to combat the virus.”

Biden’s remarks came as COVID-19 cases are surging nationwide. Hospitalizations, deaths and the testing positivity rate were also up sharply as the nation headed into Thanksgiving, and public health experts have warned that the large family gatherings expected for the holiday are likely to extend and exacerbate the surge.

He has formed a coronavirus advisory board of scientists, doctors and public health experts, and plans to establish a COVID-19 coordinator in the White House to lead his administration’s response.

This week, however, Biden focused beyond the crisis stateside and unveiled his national security team on Tuesday, including his nominees for secretary of state, director of national intelligence and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Drawing implicit contrasts with Trump, Biden said the team “reflects the fact that America is back, ready to lead the world, not retreat from it.” He’s also expected to name Janet Yellen as treasury secretary in the coming weeks.

In urging Americans to be vigilant in their Thanksgiving plans, Biden said Wednesday he was taking precautions of his own, eschewing his traditional large family gathering and spending the holiday instead with just his wife, daughter and son-in-law.

He’s traveling with his wife, Jill, to Rehoboth Beach, the small Delaware beach town where the two have a vacation home. That’s where they’ll host their family for Thanksgiving dinner. Biden is expected to stay through the weekend in Rehoboth before returning to Wilmington for further work on the transition.

Trump will forgo his usual plans to celebrate Thanksgiving at his private club in Florida and will instead remain at the White House.