Tag: sore loser Trump

‘Flat-out sabotage’ as Mnuchin tries to put $455 billion in COVID funds out of Biden team’s reach

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Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is under fire for attempting to undermine the incoming Biden administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic on his way out the door after his department confirmed Tuesday that it intends to place $455 billion in unspent coronavirus relief funds into an account that requires congressional authorization to access.

Bloomberg reported that the funds, which Congress allocated to the Federal Reserve in March for emergency lending programs to assist local governments and struggling businesses, will be put in the Treasury Department’s General Fund following Mnuchin’s widely condemned decision last week to cut off the relief programs at the end of the year.

Mnuchin requested that the funds be reallocated by the currently divided Congress, and the Fed has agreed to cooperate with the outgoing treasury secretary’s move. Continue reading.

Detroit had more vote errors in 2016 when Trump won Michigan by a narrow margin. He didn’t object then.

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DETROIT — Republican Party leaders who urged Michigan’s state canvassing board to hold off certifying the Nov. 3 election results before it met Monday cited what they described as “significant problems and irregularities” in Wayne County, home of Detroit.

The GOP officials pointed to the number of “unbalanced” precincts, where there were small discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters logged by election workers in the poll books. Party officials unsuccessfully called on the board to conduct an audit before it certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state with a 3-to-1 vote.

“To simply gloss over those irregularities now without a thorough audit would only foster feelings of distrust among Michigan’s electorate,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and state GOP Chair Laura Cox wrote in a letter Saturday. Continue reading.

Trump undercuts official who delayed transition as she gets slammed for ‘unprofessional’ letter

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GSA head Emily Murphy’s lengthy letter telling President-elect Joe Biden she is releasing transition funds to him comes with a strange set of personal remarks, including the claim she was not told how or when to authorize release the more than $7 million in those funds.

The only problem is that President Donald Trump says he is the one who told her to release the money.

“Please now (sic) that I came to my decision independently, based on the law and available facts,” Murphy writes. “I was never directed or indirectly pressured by any Executive branch official–including those who work at the White House or GSA–with regard to the substance or timing of my decision.”

Continue reading.

Congressman seeks to have Rudolph Giuliani disbarred over attempts to overturn election

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In the three weeks since Election Day, Rudolph W. Giuliani has waged a prodigiously unsuccessful legal fight on behalf of President Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results. Giuliani’s bizarre news conferences and literal meltdown became fodder for late-night talk show hosts, while his even more bizarre legal arguments have prompted federal judges to unleash withering rebukes.

Giuliani and the rest of the efforts of the Trump campaign’s legal team won’t shift the election results in the president’s favor, but legal ethicists such as Scott Cummings of the UCLA School of Law do not view the former New York mayor as harmless.

“People are emailing me saying this is comical, and I’d say it would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous,” Cummings told The Washington Post on Monday in reference to Giuliani’s actions on Trump’s behalf. “We’re living through this moment where actions that should have consequences don’t seem to — at least not in a way we would have predicted in the past — and that erodes trust in the system.” Continue reading.

In Wisconsin recount, Trump challenges pile up, slow tall

MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin recount observer Ardis Cerny stretched her neck as far as she could toward a Plexiglas divider separating her from two vote counters, eagle-eyeing them as they scrutinized ballot papers one by one.

When one tabulator told the ardent supporter of President Donald Trump she was leaning too far over a yellow line on a Milwaukee conference-hall floor meant to keep observers 3 feet away, Cerny bristled.

“I know you don’t want us to see the ballots,” she said. “You think we’ll find something.”

Cerny is part of a large contingent of pro-Trump observers participating in a recount the president requested and paid $3 million for in the state’s two biggest and most liberal counties, Milwaukee and Dane, in a long shot bid to erase Democrat Joe Biden’s more than 20,000-vote lead after the initial count. Continue reading.

Bolton: ‘Trump is throwing rocks through windows’

John Bolton spoke against the president’s postelection actions, and Gov. Larry Hogan called his moves to influence electors “completely outrageous.”

Former White House national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday blasted President Donald Trump for continuing to contest the Nov. 3 election results, accusing his former boss of mounting political damage.

“I think Trump is throwing rocks through windows,” Bolton said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think he’s the political equivalent of a street rioter.”

Breaking tradition, Trump has refused to concede to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, and launched numerous legal challenges to the election results. Continue reading.

GOP Governor On Trump’s Election Tantrum: Beginning To Look Like A ‘Banana Republic’

“Frankly, I’m embarrassed that more people in the party aren’t speaking up,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden and bashed Republicans who have remained silent on the matter.

Two weeks ago, Hogan appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and said he believed Trump would “do the right thing” and admit defeat. A day earlier, virtually all major media networks had projected Biden as the winner.

Asked Sunday if he still feels that way, Hogan said he wasn’t sure.

“I have confidence that on Jan. 20 the president-elect is going to be sworn in,” Hogan said. “But I’m not sure I could say that I’m confident that the president is going to do the right thing.” Continue reading.

‘Are You Being a Sore Loser?’: CBS News’ Weijia Jiang confronts Trump as he abruptly leaves briefing

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CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, on Friday, confronted President Donald Trump regarding his outlandish claims about the outcome of the presidential election. 

In most cases, the noteworthy actions typically occur at the end of the White House press briefings when reporters have the opportunity to confront members of the Trump administration on their shortcomings. Friday was no different as Trump and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany faced heightened criticism while abruptly exiting the White House press room.

Before Trump exited, Jiang asked if the president was “being a sore loser” since President-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner. “Mr. President, are you being a sore loser?” Jiang shouted before adding, “Are you being a sore loser?” Continue reading.

How A ‘Disinformation Bubble’ Enables The Trumpist Coup Plot

President Donald Trump and his supporters are actively working to overturn the results of the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden in order to keep him in power. Their despicable plot revolves around disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Americans, in large part voters of color, on the grounds that their ballots were fraudulent. Their claims have been thoroughly demolished in legal proceedings finding no evidence that widespread fraud took place, because it did not. Top federal, state, and local officials have said that there were no election security problems, and the president’s legal team at times has acknowledged in court that no fraud took place.

But the Trumpist effort to steal the election in broad daylight doesn’t rely on whether its arguments can stand up to scrutiny in court. It is a fundamentally political effort. Rudy Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team are propagating a shambling mass of lies and deranged conspiracy theories about the election. They hope to create enough confusion to give cover to Republican officials at the local, state, and federal level working to subvert the will of the electorate and use their power to preserve the president’s. They want local and state Republican officials to refuse to certify election results in key states that Trump lost, in hopes that either Republican state legislators in those states will overturn the results and hand the president a victory or the election is thrown to Congress, where Republicans can grant him a second term. 

This seditious conspiracy to shatter American democracy relies on the impermeability of the right-wing information bubble: The facts are not on their side, and the law is not on their side, but the Trumpist media is on their side, so they are banging the table as loudly as they can. They will likely fail — in no small part because the key players in the would-be coup are incompetent loons — but the cost America pays will be high nevertheless. Continue reading.

Judge dismisses Trump camp’s Pennsylvania lawsuit in scathing ruling

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A federal judge on Saturday dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit in Pennsylvania seeking to invalidate millions of votes, issuing a scathing opinion saying that the state can move forward with certifying its election results.

U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew Brann ruled that the campaign presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence.”

“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more,” the judge wrote. Continue reading.