In true Philly fashion, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney did not mince words when reporters asked him about President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept a loss to Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
“I think what the president needs to do is, frankly, put his big boy pants on,” Kenney, a Democrat, said at a Friday news conference after he announced that vote counting continued in the city but that he expected Biden to come out on top.
“He needs to acknowledge the fact that he lost, and he needs to congratulate the winner, just as Jimmy Carter did, just as George H.W. Bush did and, frankly, just as Al Gore did and stop this and let us move forward as a country,” he added.
Kenney said he doubted that Trump would listen to him. But he took a jab at Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who threatened legal action in Philadelphia on Wednesday and alleged voter fraud within the city.
“He’s wrong, and he’s baseless, and he’s Rudy Giuliani, so he says whatever he wants,” Kenney said.
Kenney also dismissed allegations of voter fraud as “baseless claims” for which the Trump administration has “not produced one iota of evidence” and stressed that democracy was taking place in the City of Brotherly Love.
The race in the battleground state of Pennsylvania has yet to be officially called, but Biden overtook Trump in vote tabulations in the early hours of Friday.
Trump, for his part, has not taken the news well. He tweeted a quote Friday morning attributed to Fox News host Stuart Varney suggesting without evidence that Philadelphia “has got a rotten history on election integrity.”
Hundreds of demonstrators, meanwhile, gathered in the city to demand that every vote be counted.