Biden 'optimistic' about runoffs in Georgia
President-elect Joe Biden said that he feels "optimistic" about Tuesday's pivotal runoff elections in Georgia during an interview on V103 with Kenny Burns, a local Atlanta radio host.
"I'm doing really well, feeling really optimistic about today," Biden told Burns.
Asked what specific policies he expects to come before the Senate this year that make it so critical for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock to win, Biden cited both the need to get $2,000 payments to struggling Americans and harshly criticized the federal government’s vaccine distribution plan at length, saying Congress needs to be able to provide support to get the vaccine out to all Americans.
"Right now, for example in Georgia, you have only about 75,000 people who have gotten the vaccination, yet you got about a half a million doses of that vaccine in the state. There's no planning. The federal government has done virtually no planning. It's one thing to get a vaccination -- to get to get the actual vial -- sent to you in a frozen pack. It's another thing to get it into a needle and the vaccination into somebody’s arm," Biden said.
"So I'm gonna need [Congress'] help in making sure that we establish thousands of federally-run and federally-supported community vaccination centers of various sizes across the country. Located in high school gyms or NFL football stadiums," Biden said, adding that the vaccination project has to involve multiple levels of the government including FEMA and the under his administration vaccines will be free.
"The inability of the president and the Republican leadership, and Trump in particular, preventing that from being made available to the states is just -- it's just almost criminal in my view. And people are dying,” Biden later added.
The president-elect once again hammered Georgia’s two Republican senators and candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, saying they’ve forgotten who they have been elected to represent.
"Look here's the thing that's happening. Because of the Republican senators of Georgia, their loyalty is to Trump, not to the people of Georgia. I mean, when I got sworn into the Senate I didn't swear allegiance to the president, whether it was a Democrat or Republican. I'm not going to have any senators swear allegiance to me. It's to the Constitution and to the state of Georgia, that's who you represent," Biden said.
-ABC News' John Verhovek, Beatrice Peterson and Molly Nagle