WILL DONALD TRUMP EVER BELIEVE THAT HE LOST TO BIDEN?

 

                                           …This is how the president is acting

 

Even the presidential historians don’t believe that Trump will concede that he lost.

 

I guess as to be expected, Donald Trump tweeted the following just before it was announced that Joe Biden had won Pennsylvania: “I WON THIS ELECTION BY A LOT!”  He has also later tweeted that: “THE ELECTION IS FAR FROM OVER!”

Yes, THE DONALD’s  bid to discredit the integrity of the election results is totally childish.   For him to use legal action to block the completion of vote tallies has raised fears, even among his own aides, that he will totally refuse to concede the election.

A number of Trump’s associates have said privately that the president is unlikely to formally concede the race.  Especially under any circumstances in the traditional manner of a concession speech and a phone call to Joe Biden.

Some aides have suggested that they are hoping to convince him to publicly commit to a peaceful transition.  But the experts warned that Trump could work to scuttle cooperation with Biden’s team.  Trump will probably never ensure a smooth turnover of the management of the federal government on Inauguration Day come Jan. 20.

Fortunately, the news and presidential historians are now starting to say what needs to be said.  The presidential historian Douglas Brinkley had the following to say about the current president.  “Donald Trump is behaving like a tin-pot dictator who just lost power and refuses to accept the results.”

Trump had spent months falsely calling mail-in voting as being fraudulent.  He also called the counting of votes being improper in Pennsylvania and Arizona, which Biden flipped after Trump had won them in 2016.  Georgia, which Biden is ahead in the votes while Trump says it is headed for a recount as evidence that he was right.  Public officials in those states have said there is no evidence of widespread fraud affecting the counts, and they are rigorously investigating individual allegations of wrongdoing.

Trump supporters were even gathering outside the Maryland State House.  But they were there to support the president's baseless claims of electoral fraud in the wake of Joe Biden's victory.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian has also said that Joe Biden is in many ways looked at as was FDR, for being the right man for the right job.  Being the president during a Pandemic is just as difficult as it was for FDR being the president during a World War.  But we must be aware that the current president is only interested in being re-elected.  He has no interest in its historical aspects if he wasn’t successful in being re-elected. 

Trump has dispatched a team of lawyers and White House surrogates to the contested states to challenge the integrity of some ballots.  Trump wants to halt the counting of others and to seek statewide recounts. He has continued to deliver ridiculous negating remarks about the election system from the White House.  His remarks were laced with so many falsehoods that the TV networks cut away from their live coverage while he was still talking.  That's how ridiculous he has become.

White House spokesman Judd Deere had emphasized that transition coordination with Biden’s team has been underway for months as is required by federal law.  But Biden’s transition team already had been granted 10,000 square feet of office space at the Commerce Department.  Trump “will accept the results of a free and fair election,” Deere said. “The Trump Administration is following all statutory requirements.”  Biden's team was supposed to receive funding to perform these transition events, but that has yet to come from the Commerce Department.

As of midday Saturday, there was still no sign of an acknowledgment of Biden’s victory from Trump, or from the White House.

Biden and his aides have increased their warnings that they will not wait for Trump to accept any defeat.  In his remarks late Friday, Biden asked the nation to be patient as the votes were counted, but he made it clear that he was on track to victory.

“While we’re waiting for the final results, I want people to know we are not waiting to get to work done and start the process,” he added, noting that he and running mate Kamala Harris had met a day earlier with public health experts to discuss the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 236,000 Americans..

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates was more pointed in reacting to reports that Trump would refuse to concede by saying that “the American people will decide this election.  And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

Transition experts said it will be crucial for Biden to gain quick and full cooperation from Trump’s team.  Under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, the formal transition would begin once Emily Murphy, the Trump-appointed head of the General Services Administration (GSA), ascertains that a winner has been determined.

That would green-light a series of mandatory steps in which Biden’s transition would gain access to federal funding and additional federal office space, along with access to government agencies and briefing materials.

A team of about two dozen GSA officials, most of them career civil service workers, will be helping to help oversee the process.

In 2000, during the contested election between George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore, the transition was delayed 36 days, launching in mid-December after Bush won a legal battle at the Supreme Court and claimed victory.

In a memo on the importance of a smooth transfer of power, the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition cited the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks during Bush’s first year in office and noted that his national security team was not fully in place until the late spring and summer of that year.

An expert who has worked closely on presidential transitions said that the challenge is particularly daunting given the coronavirus pandemic.  He was citing federal efforts to help private companies develop, test and, ultimately, distribute a vaccine.  “The stakes are just incredibly high to have a smooth and peaceful transition. Our national security depends on it,” said this person, who as usual with the Trump administration, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the election had not yet been called at that time.

“The tone at the top is really, really important,” said the anonymous person of Emily Murphy, the GSA administration head: “I think she’ll be in a tough position. She’ll see what the right thing to do is and have political pressure [from Trump] not to do it.”

House Democrats have criticized Ms. Murphy, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2017, over the GSA’s oversight of the Trump International Hotel, which is leased on federal property.  Some raised questions over whether Trump had pressured the GSA to scuttle plans to relocate the FBI headquarters.  The plan was to move the FBI out of the city and redevelop its property.  But President Trump was concerned that the new development of the old FBI property would compete with his hotel.  Murphy has said she was not involved with any decisions to relocate the FBI.

Former GSA officials emphasized that the agency strives to be apolitical and that the staffing of career officials in the transition unit will help shield it from any potential White House pressure.

As expected, Trump’s allies have taken to social media to baselessly accuse some of the president’s aides, including Cabinet officials, of illegally cooperating with Biden’s team.

Democrats expressed concerns that Trump, even if he does ultimately leaves office peacefully, he is still intent on doing as much as possible to set back Biden’s presidency.  He will do whatever it takes to make it more challenging for Biden to manage the government during an ongoing crisis.

My personal question is:  How many and who is Trump going to pardon, on his way out of the White House?

The only thing that might stop Trump from trying to delay Biden's efforts, is that Trump may be too busy dealing with the possible illegal charges that are headed after him, once he his out of the office.

“What’s interesting is that Trump is now the leader of the resistance,” said Simon Rosenberg, founder of the liberal NDN think tank. “He can do a lot to make it far more difficult under what is already very difficult circumstances because of Covid.  He’s going to create a powerful logic for his 40% of the country, that Biden’s presidency is illegal from the start.  And he may work really hard to build that narrative.”

It’s pretty obvious how divided the nation is today.  It also true that Trump and his supporters will do whatever they can to stop, or slow down the Biden/Harris team for a peaceful transition.

Copyright G. Ater 2020