I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, December 15th.

Here's what Mitch McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor just since we went on the air. Are you ready? This is a

transcription from the New York Times. Many of us hope that the presidential election would

yield a different result, but our system of government has processes to determine who will be

sworn in on January 20th. The Electoral College has spoken.

So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.

He hadn't done that before.

He hadn't recognized the presidential election.

He was keeping mum and tacitly supporting President Trump's claims of fraud.

He also congratulated Senator Kamala Harris, referring to her as the vice president-elect. He said, beyond our differences, all Americans can

take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time.

Notably, though, the majority leader did not directly address

Trump's continued and baseless allegations of widespread voting fraud, or what the Times calls

fantastical claims, that he had won the election by a wide margin. Instead, Mr. McConnell effusively

praised the president for his four years of service,

spending several minutes listing what he said were important achievements in domestic and foreign

policy before he ever mentioned Mr. Biden's name. But nonetheless, Mitch McConnell has now

said President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for the first

time, and so it further marginalizes Trump's baseless claims. There it is. And segueing from the last

segment, if businesses are increasingly shutting down again and people are increasingly out of work long term,

the next thing that we can't stop focusing on, even if the politicians stop focusing on it,

is COVID relief. And we know Congress has been stalled for months, and there is a Christmas cliff.

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