Nancy Pelosi calls Joe Biden ‘president-elect’

Washington: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, on Friday called Joe Biden the "president-elect" of the United States after he pulled ahead in key election results.

"This morning it is clear that the Biden-Harris ticket will win the White House," Pelosi told reporters after Biden overtook President Donald Trump in the potentially decisive state of Pennsylvania.

"President-Elect Biden has a strong mandate to lead," she said. It is "a happy day for our country. Joe Biden is a unifier, because he is determined to bring people together." Pennsylvania would be enough to put Biden past the magic number of 270 votes in the state-by-state Electoral College, which determines the presidency.

Biden also took a razor-thin lead in votes counted from Georgia, which Trump until late in the campaign did not consider to be in play. The Democrat has stopped short of declaring victory but said he expected that he and his vice presidential pick Kamala Harris would triumph.

Trump has angrily made unsubstantiated claims of fraud and sought to halt vote counting after prematurely declaring victory himself following the close of polls Tuesday. Biden’s performance came despite projections that Democrats will lose several seats in the House of Representatives, a major disappointment for the party which had hoped to expand its majority.

Pelosi played down the losses but said that the next House election in 2022 "will be a steeper climb" without Trump on the ballot. The party of the president nearly always loses seats in Congress in the first midterm election.

Meanwhile, Republican US Senator Mitt Romney said on Friday it was wrong for Donald Trump -- on the verge of losing the presidency to Joe Biden -- to claim that the election was "rigged, corrupt and stolen" by Democratic rivals.

While the president is "within his rights" to request recounts and seek investigations into alleged voting irregularities, as his supporters claim occurred, "he is wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen," said Romney, an occasional Trump critic.

"Doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions.

In a related devellpment, Joe Biden’s campaign warned on Friday that President Donald Trump could be escorted from the White House if he refuses to admit defeat in America’s knife-edge election.

Democratic challenger Biden is edging towards the presidency after pulling ahead in the key states of Pennsylvania and Georgia. But Trump has made it clear that he is not ready to concede, launching unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and claiming falsely that he had been cheated out of relection.

"As we said on July 19th, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House," said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.

In an interview with Fox News in July, Trump refused to commit to accepting the results of the election and a peaceful transfer of power if he lost. With tens of thousands of votes remaining to be counted, many of them from heavily Democratic areas, Biden opened up a 9,000-vote lead over the Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania, real-time state election results showed.

Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes would be enough to put the 77-year-old Biden past the magic number of 270 votes in the Electoral College, which determines the presidency. Biden has also taken a razor-thin lead in Georgia, a state once seen as reliably Republican, which announced Friday that it will recount the votes.

As of late morning there was no word on Biden’s movements Friday. He last spoke Thursday afternoon when he told reporters in his home town of Wilmington, Delaware that he had "no doubt" he would be declared the winner of the election. With his victory looking increasingly likely, the US Secret Service increased its protective bubble around the former vice president, The Washington Post reported Friday.