Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning

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Even before he was elected in 2016, Donald J. Trump was building a conspiracy theory about voter fraud that took on new energy this year, as his political fortunes ebbed during the coronavirus pandemic.

The trouble broke out inside the main counting room in Detroit late on the morning of Nov. 4.

It was the day after Election Day, and until then the process of tabulating votes from the city’s various counting boards had gone smoothly inside the TCF Center, the cavernous convention hall that plays host to the North American International Auto Show.

As batches of ballots came in by van, workers methodically inspected and registered them at 134 separate tables, each monitored by voting rights observers and so-called election challengers from each party. Continue reading.

Trump walks back tweet saying Biden ‘won’ election

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President Trump on Sunday walked back a tweet in which he said President-elect Joe Biden “won” the election while continuing to spread unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about a rigged presidential election. 

“He won because the Election was Rigged. NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more!” Trump initially tweeted in response to a clip from Fox News’s Jesse Watters.

“All of the mechanical ‘glitches’ that took place on Election Night were really THEM getting caught trying to steal votes. They succeeded plenty, however, without getting caught,” the president added in a subsequent tweet. “Mail-in elections are a sick joke!” Continue reading.

Trump tunes out pandemic surge as he focuses on denying election loss

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President Trump finally received some good news this past week: Amid spiking coronaviruscases nationwide — more than 100,000 new cases a day since Nov. 4, with deaths rising, too — pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that its experimental coronavirus vaccine was more than 90 percent effective.

But the president was furious.

The news came six days after Election Day — too late to help Trump in his contest against President-elect Joe Biden — and he said both Pfizer and his own Food and Drug Administration had withheld the announcement to prevent delivering him the sort of pre-election public-relations victory that could have helped him in the polls. Instead of touting the vaccine success as a crowning achievement of his administration, as advisers encouraged, Trump barely mentioned it except to gripe on Twitter that “the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election.” Continue reading.

Questions swirl at Pentagon after wave of departures

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Is it a coup, a push to withdraw from Afghanistan or just some petty score settling?

That’s the question that has swirled in defense circles amid a wave of firings and resignations at the Pentagon that saw the ouster of the Defense secretary and installation of several aides seen as loyalists of President Trump.

The shakeup has led Trump’s critics to sound the alarm, with Democratic lawmakers and others fearful of what the Pentagon’s new leadership will try to push through in Trump’s remaining two months in office. Continue reading.

Militia Groups, Conspiracy Theorists Rally In D.C. For Election Loser Donald Trump

President Donald Trump briefly waved to the crowd from his motorcade on his way to go golfing.

Demonstrators as part of a “Million MAGA March” swarmed Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a show of support for President Donald Trump, whose loss to President-elect Joe Biden was determined exactly a week ago.

The protest didn’t quite live up to its name, however.

A few thousand Trump supporters ― many of them unmasked ― did show up to Freedom Plaza in a show of solidarity with the president, who has spent the last week desperately seeking to overturn the results of the election by falsely claiming widespread voter fraud, but the number of marchers fell way short of the “more than one million” falsely touted by the Trump administration on Saturday afternoon.  Continue reading.

After thousands of Trump supporters rally in D.C., violence erupts when night falls

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President Trump’s supporters had celebrated for hours on Saturday, waving their MAGA flags and blaring “God Bless the U.S.A.” as they gathered in Washington to falsely claim that the election had been stolen from the man they adore. The crowd had even reveled in a personal visit from Trump, who passed by in his motorcade, smiling and waving.

But that was before the people who oppose their hero showed up and the mood shifted, growing angrier as 300 or so counterprotesters delivered a message the president’s most ardent backers were unwilling to hear: The election is over. Trump lost.

On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact. Continue reading.

Defense secretary sent classified memo to White House about Afghanistan before Trump fired him

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In the run-up to the election, President Trump’s tweet saying that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be “home by Christmas!” raised alarm among senior U.S. officials who had been working on a more gradual withdrawal.

The existing plan, tied to precarious negotiations with the Taliban insurgent group to sign a peace deal with the Afghan government, had not yielded the progress that American officials wanted. While the Pentagon was on its way to reducing the number of troops to fewer than 5,000 this month, negotiations appeared to stall and the Taliban continued to launch attacks across the country.

After consulting with senior military officers, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper sent a classified memo to the White House this month expressing concerns about additional cuts, according to two senior U.S. officials familiar with the discussion. Conditions on the ground were not yet right, Esper wrote, citing the ongoing violence, possible dangers to the remaining troops in the event of a rapid pullout, potential damage to alliances and apprehension about undercutting the negotiations. Continue reading.

In Trump’s final days, a 30-year-old aide purges officials seen as insufficiently loyal

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Over the past week, President Trump has axed his defense secretary and other top Pentagon aides, his second-in-command at the U.S. Agency for International Development, two top Homeland Security officials, a senior climate scientist and the leader of the agency that safeguards nuclear weapons.

Engineering much of the post-election purge is Johnny McEntee, a former college quarterback who was hustled out of the White House two years ago after a security clearance check turned up a prolific habit for online gambling.

A staunch Trump loyalist, McEntee, 30, was welcomed back into the fold in February and installed as head of personnel for the Trump White House.. Since the race was called for President-elect Joe Biden, McEntee has been distributing pink slips, warning federal workers not to cooperate with the Biden transition and threatening to oust people who show disloyalty by job hunting while Trump is still refusing to acknowledge defeat, according to six administration officials. Continue reading.

White House official admits the administration is still pretending Biden didn’t win

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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro claimed on Friday that White House officials are still operating as if President Donald Trump will remain in office for a second term despite him losing the presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden. 

During an appearance on Fox Business, Navarro revealed how post-election day-to-day operations are occurring at the White House. Navarro’s remarks appear to confirm numerous reports circulating about the Trump administration’s stance on Biden winning the election. According to them, he did not win at the election at all. In fact, Navarro and others are continuing to blatantly disregard the outcome of the election.

“We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption there will be a second Trump term,” Navarro said on Friday morning. Continue reading.

How long can Republicans keep helping Trump’s effort to delegitimize the election?

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There are cracks starting to show — but there are strong political reasons for Republicans to hang on until the Senate runoffs in Georgia in January

Republicans’ private talking point about how they can continue to aid President Trump in denying election results boils down to what a senior Republican told The Washington Post this week: What’s the harm in humoring him?

Plenty, say national security officials who are concerned about how other countries — and the coronavirus — could take advantage of a slowed transition for President-elect Joe Biden. Plenty, say democracy experts who warn that the Republican Party is undermining the foundations of the U.S. electoral system and that the GOP is mirroring authoritarianism.

And amid such heavy criticism, and the fact that Trump’s legal team is struggling to provide any evidence or gain traction in the courts, we’re starting to see cracks in the GOP over holding the line for Trump. Continue reading.