After the reporting of counting confirmed (by the Associated Press, the Decision Desk HQ, the NBC News Service, and others) that the Democrat leader Joe Biden has won the presidential race, the president-elect has moved ahead with a plan to contain the pandemic and to unite and heal the country. Biden has taken his firm steps toward claiming the Presidency. All of this is happening with Donald Trump in his denial mode refusing to believe the counting and the results.

Biden has promised a much more muscular response to the Covid19 pandemic than he says Trump has made. Till now the virus has infected 9.7 million people in the U.S. and killed more than 236,000 people as daily case counts continue to rise. In this regard, on Monday, President-elect Biden formed a task force under the name of COVID advisory board which would have three co-chairs. One of the co-chairs is Vivek Murthy, an Indo-American surgeon general. The other two co-chairs are David Kessler and Marcella Nunez- Smith. David Kessler had been the Commissioner of the USFDA from 1990-to 1997 and Vivek Murthy had been vocal on issues like gun-control and opioid crisis. Murthy has experience as the Vice-Admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. In this role, he had dealt with crises like Ebola, Zika, and Flint water crisis. The advisory board has 13 members in total.

Apart from the main issues like Covid19 crisis in which the US is the worst-hit nation in the world, Biden is simultaneously moving towards the appointments to White House staff jobs. Maintaining his standard and well-appreciated stance of coordinating across the aisle with the Republican leaders, he reasserted his stance of coordination and good working relationship with the leaders of the GOP.

On the other hand, Trump’s denial had thrown many Republicans into shock with many unable to embrace the position held by Trump, throwing the White House staff into a situation of power vaccum. He seems to be avoiding or unable to digest the fact that Biden stands to win around 306 Electoral College votes, which is way beyond the required threshold of 270 needed to win the Presidency. Trump’s campaign is raising money for a legal fight to challenge the counting though it is understood by observers that he does not have enough to cut through Biden’s count of electoral college votes.

As required under the 57-year-old Presidential Transition Act, the administrator of the General Services Administration, a Trump appointee, has so far not formally acknowledged that Biden has won the election. Certification by the GSA administrator allows the transition teams to fan across the federal government, access expanded office space, start tapping into $6 million of funding, and study detailed agency briefing books.

Former President George W. Bush has not been a Trump supporter and at one point was also slammed by Trump for not supporting him on critical ideological issues. Bush has only spoken in particularly fraught moments over the last four years. In the current environment of denial and avoidance, George W. Bush sent a clear signal to the Republican Party to back away from the brink of outright denialism as Trump toys with a legal fight that could spur a transition crisis. To put the message and his intention clearly, Bush issued a statement saying that he had called Biden, whom he referred to as the president-elect. He said that he had congratulated Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory, and offered his support during the transition.

Biden, after getting congratulatory messages from leaders around the world, and from Republicans like Bush, had said that his mandate is to curb the pandemic, rebuild the economy, fight climate change, root out the systemic racism, and expand access to health care. Apart from forming the task force on Covid19, Biden has promised to return US into the Paris climate accord of 2015. He further added that he would attempt to restore a bipartisan spirit in a bitterly divided Washington. A prominent Biden ally, Democratic Senator Chris Coon of Delaware, called on Trump to back the talks on a New Coronavirus Relief Package during the time before Biden is sworn into the White House, adding that this way the outgoing President can show some graciousness. Jim Kenney, mayor of Philadelphia, stated in a press meet that Trump should put his big boys pants on, accept his defeat, and leave the office with grace.

Trump’s denialism to accept his defeat got evinced recently when he fired the Defence Secretary Mark Esper over the latter’s opposition over using the military on the streets during protests over racial injustice earlier this year. Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and Chairman of House Armed Services Committee responded to this latest firing by stating that this is not just childish but also reckless.