A full two weeks after President-elect Joe Biden was projected as the clear winner of the 2020 election, the nation is steaming toward a collision.
President Trump, far from moving toward an acceptance of his defeat, has intensified his efforts to overturn the results.
But that effort is running up against the clock — and against legal and political realities. Continue reading.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday justified Donald Trump’s refusal to concede that he lost the election by running through a list of grievances about how Democrats treated Trump in 2016.
Trump has refused to admit that he lost the 2020 election, instead tweeting debunked claims of voter fraud and election rigging. The General Services Administration, which is responsible for administering the transition to brief and prepare President-elect Joe, has refused to ascertain that Biden did indeed win the election and continues to block the transition.
The Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate in the transfer of power to the incoming administration is happening despite the increasing death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a nationwide vaccine distribution plan. Experts say the refusal to cooperate could make the virus, now surging across much of the country, even worse. Continue reading.
Republican lawmakers are running out of patience with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election, which have failed to gain traction in court or the media.
Trump’s legal team has yet to back up its claims of widespread election fraud with enough evidence to convince Republican officials in Congress and in key states that they have any merit.
Instead, a growing number of Republicans are publicly acknowledging that Joe Biden is likely to be the next president and calling on the Trump administration to begin sharing intelligence and other transitions to allow for a smooth transfer of power. Continue reading.
When Wisconsin Republicans opened an office earlier this year in the historical Bronzeville neighborhood, it was meant to be a physical symbol of President Trump’s commitment to urban voters. Signs on the window declared “Black Voices Matter,” and the address was on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
But on Friday, as state officials began recounting ballots in Milwaukee County at the request of Trump’s failed reelection campaign, the office had become, for many residents, a symbol of Republican hypocrisy.
“The president kept talking about Black voices mattering when he attempted to make inroads with the African American community,” said Cavalier Johnson, president of the Milwaukee Common Council. “Then he loses the election, and turns right around and targets the same communities that these Black folks came from.” Continue reading.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is seizing the moment, not to aggressively confront the president he defeated, but to act presidential in his stead.
WASHINGTON — Inside the wrought-iron fences that surround the 18-acre White House complex, the 2020 election rages on, with President Trump angrily refusing to concede. But the rest of the world — and President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. — is moving on.
The leaders of Western Europe have called Mr. Biden, while the world’s rising superpower, China, has congratulated him. PayPal’s chief executive extended his “warmest congratulations to President-Elect Joe Biden, who will become the 46th president of the U.S.A.” The Boeing Corporation, which benefited from Mr. Trump’s demands for big-ticket defense items, issued a statement on Friday saying, “We look forward to working with the Biden administration.”
It is as if the vast machinery of diplomacy, business and lobbying has suddenly been recalibrated for the Biden era. Mr. Trump, by far the dominant world figure for the past four years, is increasingly treated as irrelevant. Continue reading.
A growing number of conservative Republicans are breaking with President Trump and his legal team over what they view as a dangerous effort to overturn the election results by promoting conspiracy theories.
GOP lawmakers, conservative lawyers and key figures in rightwing media say it is time for his legal team to either back up their claims about fraud or concede defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.
The voices range from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) to conservative lawyers and thought leaders such as Karl Rove. Continue reading.
The Michigan lawmakers said they had “not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome.”
A delegation of Republican state lawmakers from Michigan came to Washington on Friday as part of President Donald Trump’s Hail Mary attempt to usurp the results of the election he lost.
But when the day ended, the lawmakers were unequivocal: President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Michigan was still intact.
Trump has baselessly cast doubt on the presidential election in Michigan, which he lost Biden by approximately 150,000 votes, and has waged a campaign over the past two weeks to pressure Republicans in the state to back him in reversing the outcome. And despite White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s insistence that Friday’s gathering was “not an advocacy meeting” — and that no one from the Trump campaign would be present — several attorneys running Trump’s legal effort to overturn the election were expected to call in. Continue reading.
Dr. Bandy X. Lee was interviewed by Patrick R. McElligott, who is a retired psychiatric social worker from upstate New York. He has decades of experience in grass roots social-political activism, including working on his late friend Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s case, serving as Onondaga Nation Chief Paul Waterman’s top assistant on burial protection and repatriation, and providing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency information on Super Fund sites for federal court cases. Dr. Lee agreed to an interview regarding current events in post-election America.
McElligott: In April, 2017, you organized the “Duty to Warn” Conference. Later, you were the editor and contributor to the book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Has Donald Trump’s behaviors since losing the 2020 election reinforced your opinion on the dangers Trump poses to a civilized society?
Lee: Absolutely. We are seeing the last bout of just how much he is willing and able to destroy norms and to push the limits. It is clear he does not intend to leave without placing us in further danger, and without obstructing the president-elect’s agenda as much as possible. My regret is that, because of the “gag order” on all mental health experts, which the American Psychiatric Association forced through public campaigns since this administration, the people are still left vulnerable without having learned much. As we see from the 72 million who voted for him again, we are very likely to repeat our errors. Continue reading.
After a hand recount of nearly 5 million ballots, and an audit that found no fraud or irregularities, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state announced Thursday night that President-elect Joe Biden beat President Trump in the state by 12,284 votes.
Multiple factors can be described as decisive when a race is so close, but here is one to consider: John Lewis represented Clayton County in Congress from 1986 until he diedfrom pancreatic cancer in July. In 2016, Hillary Clinton garnered 75,908 from Clayton, which is just south of downtown Atlanta and includes the city’s airport. In 2020, Biden won with 95,232 votes from Clayton.
Trump set the tone for his relationship with urban America in January 2017 when he ripped Lewis for declining to attend his inauguration by saying that the civil rights legend was “all talk” and “no action.” This was a ludicrous line of attack: Only one of these men was nearly beaten to death by police for protesting racial injustice, and it was not Trump. Continue reading.
After four long days of uncertainty, the purveyors of mainstream media credibility — including The Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press and all the major broadcast and cable news networks including the president’s once-favorite Fox News — all declared on Nov. 7 that Joe Biden had won the presidency.
Here and there, a few votes remained to be counted. But the outcome was clear to most of the media. The election was over. And President Trump had lost.
But nearly two weeks later, as courts shut down the Trump campaign’s long-shot legal challenges and states move forward with certifications of the vote, Trump himself is not letting go. And fighting alongside him are large — if wavering— swaths of the conservative media landscape. Continue reading.
