Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Officials increasingly alarmed about Trump’s power grab

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Senior Trump administration officials are increasingly alarmed that President Trump might unleash — and abuse — the power of government in an effort to overturn the clear result of the election. 

Why it matters: These officials tell me that Trump is spending too much time with people they consider crackpots or conspiracy theorists and flirting with blatant abuses of power. 

  • There are 32 days until President-elect Biden’s inauguration.

The big picture: Their fears include Trump’s interest in former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s wild talk of martial law; an idea floated of an executive order to commandeer voting machines; and the specter of Sidney Powell, the conspiracy-spewing election lawyer, obtaining governmental power and a top-level security clearance. Continue reading.

Right-Wing Media Figures Still Refuse To Admit Biden Won

The new era of competition between Fox News and its would-be rivals, Newsmax and One America News Network, appears to be fueling an unwillingness by commentators at all three networks to accurately describe Joe Biden as the president-elect, even after the Electoral College met this week.

Since losing the election, President Donald Trump has increasingly trained his criticism on Fox News. He has ranted that his personal propaganda outlet has proven insufficiently supportive of his illegitimate effort to overturn the results based on phony voter fraud claims, urging his supporters to instead watch Newsmax or OAN. Fox has aggressively course-corrected in hopes of maintaining its audience, while the smaller networks have lashed out at the dominant player in hopes of ripping away more of its viewers.

Overnight, for instance, OAN’s Pearson Sharp highlighted that his network “will officially not be calling Joe Biden the president-elect.” He went on to say that OAN is “the only broadcast news network out there with the integrity to report that this election isn’t over,” criticizing Fox, Breitbart.com, and Newsmax for having “caved.” Continue reading.

Top Republicans offer conflicting messages about Trump’s loss while campaigning in Georgia

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COLUMBUS, Ga. — When Vice President Pence took the stage here Thursday for a lunchtime rally with Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, he said that President Trump was still fighting to win reelection, even though the electoral college formalized Joe Biden’s victory Monday.

But in television ads airing across the state, allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are making a different argument: that Trump has lost the election, and Democrats could control Washington if they win these two seats on Jan. 5.

These very different messages highlight the conflict within the Republican Party about the best way to win an election that will determine control of the Senate. While Trump and his supporters continue to push baseless claims of voter fraud, McConnell’s allies have warned that Democrats would run rampant if they gain control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. Continue reading.

President Trump’s use of the authoritarian playbook will have lasting consequence

Six weeks after the U.S. election, President Donald Trump had still not accepted defeat. This behavior is not typical in mature democracies. And it’s reminiscent of countries with what political scientists call “hybrid regimes” – nations that have elements of democracy but in practice are not democracies. 

For us – politics scholars studying Latin America and the former Soviet Union – Trump’s resistance to election results underscores the fragility of democratic institutions when confronted with authoritarian practices. These include deligitimizing election results, interfering with judicial independence and attacking independent media and opposition.

Trump is part of a global trend in authoritarianism. The United States can learn a great deal from other countries where democracies fell victim to the authoritarian playbook.  Continue reading.

Senate GOP has accepted Biden’s win but continues to push Trump’s baseless fraud claims

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Senate Republicans may be acknowledging President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Trump, but the politically charged fight over Trump’s fallacious claims about voter fraud rages on — and threatens to overshadow legitimate efforts to safeguard future elections.

A Wednesday hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee became a forum for Republicans, led by its departing chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), to re-air Trump’s baseless case against the election results in swing states as the president cheered them on from a distance. Complaining that courts threw out Trump’s election lawsuits on mere “technicalities,” GOP senators and aligned witnesses warned that until their concerns were addressed, public trust in the security of the election process would not be restored.

There is no evidence of significant or widespread voter fraud, as the president and his allies continue to insist. Trump’s own attorney general has made that clear while the courts overwhelmingly have dismissed his campaign’s unprecedented effort to overturn Biden’s victory. Across more than 50 cases, at least 88 judges — including 39 appointed or nominated by Republicans — have turned down Trump’s legal challenges in procedural rulings or decisions on their merits. Continue reading.

‘Irrelevant to the course of justice’: CNN reports Bill Barr dismissed Trump’s tweets as ‘the deposed king ranting’

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Attorney General Bill Barr is dismissing President Donald Trump’s tweets, according to a new report by CNN.

Barr reportedly said, according to CNN’s Jaimie Gangel, “none of this matters— it’s the deposed King ranting. Irrelevant to the course of justice and to Trump’s election loss.”

The report came after Trump had repeatedly lashed out at Barr on Twitter on Saturday. Continue reading.

Federal judge reminds Sydney Powell how US elections work in yet another blow to ‘kraken’ conspiracy suits

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Things are not going well for President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Sydney Powell after a federal judge on Wednesday reminded her of how elections work in the United States.

In a 45-page ruling on Powell’s lawsuit in Wisconsin, U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper reminded Powell that federal judges do not appoint the President of the United States, according to Law & Crime.

“Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country,” Pepper wrote. “One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so. After a week of sometimes odd and often harried litigation, the court is no closer to answering the ‘why.’ But this federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks.” Continue reading.

Actually, all Minnesota GOPers in Congress signed brief to overturn election result

A clerical error left Reps. Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber off the list.

Rep. Tom Emmer wasn’t the only congressional Republican from Minnesota to sign an amicus brief to overturn the election result in favor of President Donald Trump.

Despite Joe Biden beating Trump in the Nov. 3 election, parts of the Republican Party and the Trump campaign have made numerous attempts to overturn the result through the courts, with the potential impact of disenfranchising millions of voters.

The latest attempt has seen the Texas Attorney General file a brief claiming the changes to mail-in and absentee voting in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan were unconstitutional as the changes weren’t made by state legislatures. Continue reading.

Trump Nominates Conway and 25 Supporters for High-Level Government Appointments

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the nomination of 26 supporters to prestigious government appointments.

Among the nominees are his former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, current Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, campaign surrogate Matt Schlapp, several conservative Trump donors and Douglas Manchester, a failed Trump ambassadorial nominee who was accused in 2019 of colluding with the Republican National Committee (RNC) in a suspected pay-to-play scheme.

The president’s nominations comes less than two months before President-elect Joe Biden‘s inauguration. Continue reading.

VOA Director Forced Aside In Drive To Embed Trump Loyalists Before Biden Era

The Trump appointee who runs the government’s overseas broadcasters reassigned the head of the Voice of America on Tuesday as part of a broad effort to install supporters of the president before the Biden administration comes to power.

U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack is intending to name as VOA director Robert Reilly, an outspoken conservative ally who briefly served in the job under President George W. Bush nearly two decades ago.

This story is based on interviews with nine people with knowledge of the events described, including current and former USAGM employees and Congressional aides. They sought anonymity given the number of people that Pack has fired in his relatively short time in office. USAGM officials including Pack did not respond to a detailed request for comment. Continue reading