Tag: sore loser Trump

Georgia leaders rebuff Trump’s call for special session to overturn election results

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Top Georgia Republicans criticized President Trump on Sunday for spreading falsehoods and misinformation about the election, warning that his comments could make it harder for the GOP to win its upcoming Senate races and arguing that his continued attacks on the process put local officials in danger.

On Sunday night, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) issued a joint statement in response to a call for a special session of the legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, saying that “doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.”

The criticism comes a day after Trump headlined a two-hour rally in the state. The event was designed to whip up support for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are locked in tight Jan. 5 runoff races with their respective Democratic challengers. Instead, Trump railed against Kemp, the news media and Democrats, baselessly suggesting that the election was plagued with widespread fraud and falsely claiming that he had defeated Biden. Continue reading.

Pentagon spy agencies to meet with Biden transition team

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Pentagon officials said Saturday that leaders of the military’s intelligence services will begin meeting with members of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team Monday, ending what some current and former officials said was an impasse that undermined the transfer of control.

Officials said that advisers to the incoming Biden administration are scheduled to meet with officials at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other spy services at their headquarters.

The Defense Department and acting defense secretary Christopher Miller issued statements Saturday denying that the Pentagon had resisted giving the Biden team access to the agencies or information about their operations and budgets. Continue reading.

Senate GOP brushes off long-shot attempt to fight Biden win

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Senate Republicans are shooting down a long shot effort to challenge the Electoral College vote early next year. 

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, grabbed headlines when he announced that he would challenge the votes when Congress officially certifies President-elect Joe Biden‘s victory on Jan. 6.

But GOP senators are dismissing the effort, even as President Trump publicly praised Brooks. Continue reading.

Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state

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How Trump’s fraud claims could backfire on the GOP in Georgia’s runoff elections | The 2020 FixThe Fix’s Amber Phillips analyzes how some of the rhetoric from Trump allies could depress Republican turnout ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff elections. (Blair Guild, JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

The governor later referred to his conversation with Trump in a midday tweet, noting that he told the president that he’d already publicly advocated for a signature audit.

Kemp’s spokesman, Cody Hall, confirmed that the two men spoke. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment. Continue reading.

Fascism expert: Donald Trump has turned destructive and vindictive — like all dictators

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 I have often dubbed “fascism” mental pathology in politics, and as a fascism scholar and author of the new book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is as psychologically-minded as historians come. The way mental health professionals have brought the context of our experience with patients to understanding the turbulent presidency of Donald Trump, she has brought the context of historical figures. I interviewed her at our recent town hall.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University; a frequent commentator on CNN; an expert on fascism, authoritarian leaders, propaganda, and threats to democracy around the world. She is also a World Mental Health Coalition Board member who has helped guide members in applying our mental health knowledge to the political domain as well as within the currents of history, to achieve our mission of bettering societal mental health.

Lee: Your work and ideas have always impressed me for their psychological sensitivity, and here again you get straight to what many historians or political scientists miss, which are the commonalities, patterns, and personality consistencies across different leaders. How have you come to such psychological awareness in your work?

Ben-Ghiat: I grew up in Pacific Palisades, Calif., which is an idyllic seaside town. It might seem a strange place to start thinking about fascism and pathologies, but it was a place where many anti-Nazis, Thomas Mann and others, came to settle. So I was always aware of this pain of exile, and perhaps being a child of immigrants and the closest family member an eleven-hour plane ride away, perhaps I was interested in what kinds of regimes force people to flee their country. So I started investigating individuals, Otto Klemperer or Schoenberg, who had had to resettle. Then my first book out of my dissertation was on Italian fascist culture, but it was really a study in intellectual and cultural collaboration, how did the regime pressure people, intimidate people to work with them. Continue reading.

Judges turn back claims by Trump and his allies in six states as the president’s legal effort founders

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President Trump and his allies faced a crush of defeats in post-election litigation Friday, a further sign of their ongoing failure to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory through the courts and to gain traction through baseless claims of widespread fraud.

Just over a month after the Nov. 3 election, the Trump campaign and other Republicans suing over Biden’s win were dealt court losses across six states where they have tried to contest the results of the presidential race — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Judges ruled decisively that Trump’s side has not proved the election was fraudulent, with some offering painstaking analyses of why such claims lack merit and pointed opinions about the risks the legal claims pose to American democracy. Continue reading.

The President Is Acting Crazy, so Why Are We Shrugging It Off?

The dangerous “yeah, whatever” phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency.

On Wednesday, more than three thousand Americans died because of the coronavirus, the nation’s deadliest day yet during the pandemic. The same day, the President of the United States chose to release, on social media, a forty-six-minute videotaped address from the White House. He called it possibly “the most important speech I’ve ever made.” The pandemic’s grim toll was never mentioned. What was? The “tremendous vote fraud and irregularities” in last month’s election, the results of which the President still refuses to accept. The “statistically impossible” victory of Joe Biden, and the idea that the Democrats had so “rigged” the election that “they already knew” the outcome in advance. It was all “corrupt,” “shocking,” “constitutionally absolutely incorrect,” and “so illegal.” The President said he knew full well that he would be “demeaned and disparaged” for continuing to speak out, especially now that even some of his advisers have “disappeared” or, as he claimed, been bullied into silence. But he would do so anyway.

Donald Trump in defeat, it turns out, is even more whiny, dishonest, and self-absorbed than he was before his decisive loss to Biden a month ago. In the speech, delivered to an empty room and released straight to Facebook, for reasons that remain unclear, Trump repeated many of the election conspiracy theories, lies, and laments which he has been sending forth for weeks on Twitter and via emissaries like Rudy Giuliani. The news was that these baseless claims—the only impact of which will be to further undermine public confidence in the U.S. government—were coming directly from the President, as he stood at a lectern bearing the Presidential seal. And what words they were. The pollsters were liars. “Detroit is corrupt.” “Millions of votes were cast illegally in the swing states alone.” Continue reading.

Trump’s Pentagon nominee promoted calls for the president to declare martial law: report

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Scott O’Grady is a former fighter pilot who President Donald Trump has nominated for a senior position in the Pentagon. And according to CNN, he is also a Trump loyalist and far-right conspiracy theoristwho has been echoing Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and shared tweets calling for martial law.

Trump supporters who have posted or forwarded tweets urging the president to declare martial law include attorney Lin Wood (who has been fighting President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia) and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

According to CNN reporters Nathan McDermott, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, O’Grady “retweeted an account that shared an article that said former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had shared a petition that called for martial law. He then retweeted the same account which suggested that Trump should declare martial law.” Continue reading.

Trump largely silent as health officials sound COVID-19 alarm

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Trump administration health officials are issuing increasingly dire warnings about the coronavirus and its rapid spread across the country, drawing a sharp contrast to the president’s reluctance to acknowledge the severity of the crisis head-on.

President Trump has been largely silent when it comes to warning the public about the need for precautions or announcing major new steps aimed at curbing the spread of the virus before a vaccine is widely available.

Instead, many of his public statements have focused on election conspiracy theories and his refusal to accept the results, underscored by a 46-minute video he posted to Facebook on Wednesday. Continue reading.

Trump declines to say whether he has confidence in Barr; Harris names chief of staff

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President Trump declined Thursday to say whether he retains confidence in Attorney General William P. Barr, who this week undercut the president by saying he had not seen any evidence of fraud on a scale that would alter the election results.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to the presidential election filed by Trump’s campaign, a new blow to his floundering efforts to overturn the election.

Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris named Tina Flournoy as her chief of staff and selected other key aides Thursday as the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden forged ahead with its transition to power. View the post here.