Russian leader Vladimir Putin must be pleased to watch Donald Trump continue to refuse to concede the election to President-elect Biden, despite ongoing evidence that Biden’s the clear winner, according to a former top diplomat who may find herself back to work in the incoming Biden administration.

Trump has continued not to concede the election to Biden, despite the fact that his lawsuits across the country have either failed or been withdrawn by his attorneys.

Biden is projected to become the 46th president of the United States, by a margin of 306 to 232 in the Electoral College.

Increasingly, Trump and his allies appear to be willing to seek elections officials cast aside perfectly legal votes.

“What is not legitimate is to try to do it to disenfranchise the votes of some people, particularly people of color or people of one party, and not count or disenfranchise others. That is absolutely wrong. That’s what we saw them try to do in Wayne County, Mich., yesterday. Thankfully it failed, ultimately,” said Susan Rice, who served as ambassador to the United Nations, and White House national security adviser in the Obama administration. “But when you have the president of the United States daily, constantly, discrediting the election, pouring doubt on the results, false doubt, false doubt, that not only misinforms a huge segment of our population and corrodes trust in our democracy and our institutions themselves, but makes us a laughingstock around the world and does great damage to the democratic model, which is why I’m quite sure that Vladimir Putin is doing a happy dance in Moscow as we speak. But this is extraordinarily irresponsible.”

Rice is said to have a close relationship with Biden, and could be on his short list for secretary of state.

“I’m not going to get into any kind of personnel issues. I’ve said many times and in different contexts that I’m very glad that we have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris coming to the White House. They’re going to bring compassionate, responsible, effective leadership. And if they think I can be helpful to them in any particular capacity, I’m very open to serving,” Rice said. “But for me, the most important thing is that we are going to have leadership back in the White House that understands that we need allies. We need to act responsibly in the world. We don’t make precipitous decisions without consulting them.

“We don’t fire officials like Chris Krebs who is a patriot, who did his job and did it very well, under very difficult circumstances, and has more work to do, not just to worry about foreign interference but we’ve had attacks, cyber attacks on our hospitals and health care infrastructure, in the height of a pandemic,” Rice added, referring to the Department of Homeland Security official who declared this year’s elections to be highly secure, before being sacked by Trump. “We need responsible leadership in the Department of Homeland Security, in that role. And, we won’t thankfully, after January 20, have leadership that fires people out of spite simply for doing what the American people expect them to do and doing it well.”

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