Donald Trump announced on Saturday (November 9, 2024) that his inaugural committee will be chaired by Florida real estate investor Steven Witkoff and former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who he called “longtime friends and supporters.”. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Donald Trump announced on Saturday (November 9, 2024) that his inaugural committee will be chaired by Florida real estate investor Steven Witkoff and former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who he called “longtime friends and supporters.”

“This will be the kick-off to my administration, which will deliver on bold promises to Make America Great Again,” Mr. Trump said in a news release.

Witkoff is the President-elect’s golf partner who was with Mr. Trump when the former President was the target of a second attempted assassination at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida in September.

Mr. Trump’s first inauguration was scrutinized for its lavish spending. The inaugural committee chair back then, California billionaire Tom Barrack, drew attention by raising $107 million for the event.

Mr. Trump’s businesses and the inaugural committee reached a deal to pay Washington, D.C. $750,000 to resolve a lawsuit that alleged the committee overpaid for events at his hotel and enriched the former president’s family in the process.

The committee maintained back then that its finances were independently audited, and that the money was spent in accordance with the law.

Joe Biden, right, gets blamed by Harris allies for the Vice President Kamala Harris’, right resounding loss. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot, but history will likely remember Kamala Harris’ resounding defeat as his loss too.

As Democrats pick up the pieces following President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory, some of the Vice President’s backers are expressing frustration with Mr. Biden’s decision to seek reelection until this summer — despite longstanding voter concerns about his age and unease about post-pandemic inflation as well as the U.S.-Mexico border — all but sealed his party’s loss of the White House.

“The biggest onus of this loss is on President Biden,” said Andrew Yang, who ran against Mr. Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Ms. Harris’ unsuccessful run. “If he had stepped down in January instead of July, we may be in a very different place.”

Mr. Biden will leave office after leading the U.S. out of the worst pandemic in a century, galvanizing international support for Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion and passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that will impact communities for years to come.

But having run four years ago against Mr. Trump to “restore the soul of the country,” Mr. Biden will make way after just one term for his immediate predecessor, who overcame two impeachments, a felony conviction and an insurrection launched by his supporters. Mr. Trump has vowed to radically reshape the federal government and roll back many of Mr. Biden’s priorities.

Also read: U.S. Elections 2024 results highlights

“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Mr. Biden for some of these achievements,” said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know he escapes the legacy of being the president who beat Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”

On Wednesday (November 6, 2024), the President stayed out of sight for the second straight day, making congratulatory calls to Democratic lawmakers who won down-ballot races and one to Mr. Trump, whom he invited to a White House meeting that the President-elect accepted.

Mr. Biden is set to deliver a Rose Garden address about the election on Thursday (November 7, 2024). He issued a statement shortly after Ms. Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday (November 6, 2024), praising Ms. Harris for running a “historic campaign” under “extraordinary circumstances.”

Some high-ranking Democrats, including three advisers to the Ms. Harris campaign, expressed deep frustration with Mr. Biden for failing to recognize earlier in the election cycle that he was not up to the challenge. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Joe Biden ended his reelection

Mr. Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal debate performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee.

But polling long beforehand showed that many Americans worried about his age. Some 77% of Americans said in August 2023 that Mr. Biden was too old to be effective for four more years, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.

The President bowed out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party powers, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He endorsed Ms. Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her.

Ms. Harris managed to spur far greater enthusiasm than Mr. Biden was generating from the party’s base. But she struggled to distinguish how her administration would differ from Mr. Biden’s.

Appearing on ABC’s “The View” in September, Ms. Harris was not able to identify a decision where she would have separated herself from Mr. Biden. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Ms. Harris said, giving the Trump campaign a sound bite it replayed through Election Day.

The strategists advising the Harris campaign said the compressed campaign timetable made it even more difficult for Ms. Harris to differentiate herself from the President.

Had Mr. Biden stepped aside early in the year, they said, it would have given Democrats enough time to hold a primary. Going through the paces of an intraparty contest would have forced Ms. Harris or another eventual nominee to more aggressively stake out differences with Mr.Biden.

The strategists acknowledged that overcoming broad dissatisfaction among the American electorate about rising costs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and broad concerns about the U.S. immigration system weighed heavy on the minds of voters in key states.

Still, they said that Mr. Biden had left Democrats in an untenable place.

Ms. Harris senior adviser David Plouffe in a posting on X called it a “devastating loss.” Plouffe didn’t assign blame. He noted the Harris campaign “dug out of a deep hole but not enough.”

At the vice president’s concession speech on Wednesday (November 6, 2024), some Harris supporters said they wished the vice president had had more time to make her pitch to American voters.

“I think that would have made a huge difference,” said Jerushatalla Pallay, a Howard University student who attended the speech at the center of her campus.

Republicans are poised to control the White House and Senate. Control of the House has yet to be determined.

Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the Democratic-aligned group Third Way, said this moment was the most devastating the party has faced in his lifetime.

“Harris was dealt a really bad hand. Some of it was Biden’s making and some maybe not,” said Bennett, who served as an aide to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. “Would Democrats fare better if Biden had stepped back earlier? I don’t know if we can say for certain, but it’s a question we’ll be asking ourselves for some time.”