Biden says Trump administrator’s outreach has been ‘genuine’ as transition begins

President-elect Joe Biden said on Tuesday the Trump administration had already started reaching out to its transition team, and called the effort “sincere,” a day after a federal agency issued a letter to officially begin the transition of power.

“Immediately we were sensitized by the National Security Store at all levels,” Biden said in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt. “And they are already working on my ability to get daily presidential briefings, we are already working on meeting the Covid team at the White House and how to not only distribute but also get a vaccine distributed to a person able to get vaccinated,” so I think we’re not going to be as far behind the curve as we thought in the past. “

He added: “And I have to say that the outreach has been genuine – it hasn’t been reluctant so far and I don’t expect it to be.”

Biden also said his administration would not be “Obama’s third term” because the world changed so much during the Trump years.

“This is not Obama’s third term because … we are facing a totally different world than the one we faced in the Obama / Biden administration,” he said. “President Trump changed the landscape. It became America first, this is America alone.”

Watch more of Biden’s first interview since the election on NBC’s Nightly News with Lester Holt at 6:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. PT, and more on TODAY Wednesday morning.

President Donald Trump refused to admit he lost the race, and Biden’s comments came as his legal team continued their legal battle to overturn the election – a strategy that took a hit this week as states have started to certify their election results. After Michigan certified its results on Monday, the head of the general services administration informed Biden that the official government transition process had been approved after weeks of delay.

GSA administrator Emily Murphy said in a letter that Biden, whom she called “the apparent president-elect,” is now able to access millions of dollars in federal funds and other resources for start his transition to power. In his letter, Murphy also denied being pressured by the White House to delay the process.

Hours later, the president tweeted on Monday that he “would never concede to fake ballots and the ‘Dominion’,” referring to a conspiracy theory that alleges baselessly that a company that manufactures voting machines suppressed millions of Trump votes.

The denial has prevented Biden’s team from gaining critical access to government resources as the nation grapples with rising Covid-19 cases and economic uncertainty. However, Biden began to fill his cabinet and advertise staff for other leadership positions during the delay. He has also held briefings with former senior government officials and formed his own Covid-19 task force.

Trump and the GSA have faced mounting pressure as a growing number of Republican lawmakers have begun to publicly demand that Biden be granted access, citing national security concerns. Democratic lawmakers had also started asking Murphy to testify before Congress.