The New York Times and other media have called all the states now, with Arizona and Georgia going to Joe Biden and North Carolina to Trump. This gives us Electoral College votes of 306 to 232. I believe these are the same numbers won in the 2016 election — Trump 306, Clinton 232. The vote in the Electoral College was slightly different because of faithless electors.
Trump’s lawsuits to challenge the vote are going nowhere, and now the law firms representing him — and becoming the butts of jokes — are distancing themselves.
Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, the law firm leading the Trump campaign’s efforts to challenge the presidential election results in Pennsylvania, abruptly withdrew from a federal lawsuit that it had filed on behalf of the campaign. That followed a similar move by an Arizona law firm that was representing the Republican Party as it challenged that state’s results.
And on Friday, a top lawyer at Jones Day, which has represented Mr. Trump’s campaigns for more than four years, told colleagues during a video conference call that Jones Day would not get involved in additional litigation in this election.
No evidence of fraud has yet come to light, in spite of the tireless efforts of MAGA-heads to create some.
See also Paul Waldman, Trump’s strategy to have the courts swing the election lies in tatters.
Oh, and the pandemic is out of control. Trump stopped even pretending to do anything about it awhile back. Mike Pence, the head of the pandemic task force, went on vacation somewhere.
Meanwhile, more than 130 Secret Service officers assigned to protect Trump are either infected or quarantined, and at least 40 people in Trump’s inner circle have caught the virus, the latest being Corey Lewandowski.
A couple of days ago, David Nakamura at WaPo wrote,
On Thursday, six American service members were killed in a helicopter crash during a peacekeeping mission in Egypt. Tropical Storm Eta made landfall in North Florida, contributing to severe flooding. The number of Americans infected with the novel coronavirus continued at a record-setting pace, sending the stock market tumbling.
At the White House, President Trump spent the day as he has most others this week — sequestered from public view, tweeting grievances, falsehoods and misinformation about the election results and about Fox News’s coverage of him.
It’s not like Trump ever did the job, but now he’s not even going through the motions. He did show up at Arlington this year (unlike, say, in 2018), but other than that he’s been blessedly out of view.
In spite of being utterly disinterested in the job of president, Trump is still refusing to let go of it. The Biden transition is still being denied briefings and resources. At some point Trump’s got to be forced to cooperate with reality. CNN reports that Joe Biden is not waiting for the White House but is setting up an independent network of governors, health professionals and businesses to prepare to take over the pandemic response. That may be just as well, come to think of it.
Maybe, some time next year, we’ll find out what Jared Kushner did with all the PPE and generators and whatnot his crew confiscated.
Trump is still fighting the election. Even today. Quint Forgy just wrote at Politico,
In a new interview, Trump refused to acknowledge that he had been beaten by President-elect Joe Biden, insisting that his campaign’s election-related legal challenges would reverse the race’s outcome and arguing that Americans should “never bet against me.”
The unrealistic prediction from the president, published in the Friday edition of Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York’s newsletter, represented some of Trump’s first remarks to a member of the news media since Biden was declared the winner of the election last weekend.
Chalres Pierce: This May Be the Most Singularly Petty Bullsh*t I’ve Seen in All My Born Days.
There’s supposed to be a Million MAGA March in Washington DC tomorrow. I’m hoping counter-demonstrators stay away and just let the asshats parade around awhile and go home. Whatever violence or vandalism happens will be on them.
If Congress doesn’t act next week to force Trump to cooperate with the transition — well, I’m not sure what can be done. I’m a bit tired of listening to comments about how Trump needs time to “process.” Nobody else ever needed time to “process.”
Trump can still do a lot of damage, if the Senate lets him, but for the most part there’s not much left to the Trump Era but the whimper. Oh, and the grift. I’m sure there’s still some money that can be bilked out of the faithful somehow.
Nate Beeler-Counterpoint
I caught a glimpse of the video of Trump laying a wreath at Arlington on Veteran's day. It turned my stomach. To watch him act so solemn in a ceremony dedicated to the remembrance and honor of America's veterans while knowing he views them all as suckers and losers really hurts. His putting his hand on the wreath in some sort of gesture to suggest he's connecting with the pain and sacrifice of honorable men and women who had the courage to serve our country really hurts. Then to top off his insult he follows up his insult with a salute like he's intimately bonded through service and sacrifice to the honorable men and women who answered their country's call to duty…that really hurt also.
Trump is a draft dodging bag of shit who holds those who served our country in disdain. And for him to act any different from his true feelings is just a shame. Had he been true to his feeling he should have just placed the wreath, then stood back with his head bowed in reverence for the courage and honor he was never able to find within himself. When I say Trump is a bag of shit.. you can believe I really, really mean he's a bag of shit. You can hold that truth to be self evident.
I looked at the calendar and see that most states will certify by the end of the month, and then the electoral college votes on Dec 14. Each of these decision points should drive the election to closure, regardless of what Trump does.
I've read that he knows he lost, but is doing all this "theater" to keep the base riled and sending in cash – not to fight the election, but (revealed in the fine print) to pay off campaign debt. It's always about the grift.
I read somewhere that, while it's tempting for Biden/Harris/the Dems to confront Trump loudly over his refusal to cooperate, ignoring his nonsense is probably more effective, for now anyway. Even though it doesn't feel right. Sort of like "don't feed the troll".
Dems really have to focus on doing all we can to win the longshot Senate run-offs in Georgia, our last chance to get anything significant done for the next four years.
What was it about the past week that I loved the most? The lack of sound and fury signifying nothing from our soon to be ex-presiDUNCE.
tRUMP said nothing all week until today, when he opened the gaping, fetid and miasmatic maw that is his big fat mouth, and spewed still more stupid shit, as is his wont.
That silence we experienced over the last week wasn't merely golden. IT WAS DIAMOND-ENCRUSTED PLATINUM!!!
As part if his imbecilic spewage, he said he didn't want to send any tRUMP Plague vaccine to NY. Why? I guess this tender snowflake's fee-fee's were hurt by our Governor, Andrew Cuomo. What is it about this emotionally immature wussy that reads as "Tough Guy" to a good chunk of Americans? I din't get it. To me, tRUMP is a "whino."
This "Million MAGAt 'MORAN' March" could get out of control if a lot of "people" show-up. But they won't. Or at least I hope they don't. I don't think they'll like being told that DC isn't an open-carry state – my apology: not an open-carry city.
January 20th can't come fast enough. Oy…
Run run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me said the gingerbread man.
Trump isn't processing his loss. He trying to find an escape hatch to escape from the humiliation of being a loser. The bible says…As you judge, so shall you be judged. That kind of tells you the torment Trump is experiencing in his own mind in grappling with his upcoming certification as being a loser.
My hope is that Biden doesn't make the mistake of letting Trump get away intact. He needs to drive the proverbial wooden stake in the heart of Trumpism. If he doesn't Trump will only come out this experience like a hurricane that picks up strength after it's been predicted to die down and become less dangerous. I know it's not the thing he wants to do, but if he is serious in saying this election is for the soul of America then I would assume he fully understands the damage that Trump has done, and also understands the importance of insuring that Trump is defanged through prosecution.
I'm not a Constitutional scholar – I don't even play one on TV but the pardon of Nixon was never tested in the courts. As far as I know, it's the only time someone has been given a pardon who had not been charged. Democrats weren't sure what to do with Nixon – some wanted to avoid the ill will and bad international press of a trial. Ford's pardon of Nixon gave Democrats an exit from a difficult decision. They showed a typical lack of spine and took it. However, I'm not convinced the pardon of Nixon is a binding precedent because the USSC has never ruled on it. Also, Trump is stupid enough to brag that he engineered it in advance.
Indeed, a Trump pardon, self or otherwise, would require, to my knowledge an admission of crimes. Otherwise, what's the pardon for? Just in case I am charged with something going out the door or in the future? Pardon's weren't meant to work that way.
Trump would have to admit to the things he did, which would focus the bullseye already on his back from state governments even more, what with such an admission, and I can't imagine it wouldn't be admissible in state court.
For this reason, I don't think there will be a pardon, nor will Trump seek one. For him it could be more trouble than its worth. For everyone else, it would be justice, finally.
This scares the hell out of me – In Trump’s final days, a 30-year-old aide purges officials seen as insufficiently loyal.
I realized what all the end-of-Trump firings are about. It’s what a retreating army does when the enemy is advancing: destroy the infrastructure to hobble the advancing army.
This is a variant of seeding the courts with right wing nit-wits. It’s sacking the government of competent people and installing toadies and moles. It’s continuing the war while the enemy attempts to run the country.
Between: the courts, the complete unwillingness of the Republicans to even be civil with the incoming administration, the do-or-die challenge of taking the Senate – all in the face of a pandemic that is needlessly murdering thousands – and 40% of the country is fine with this – I’ve had it with the USA. Joe Biden may be a very likeable man, but likeable isn’t going to be enough.
Here's a repost of a link Bernie posted on the previous thread. It's a must read.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opinion/trump-lies.html
It was the pictures that got small…
Over or Under a Million of Trump's storm troopers showed up in DC to contest reality, and found out they really lacked a lot in being real storm troopers. It is reported that they where reviewed in a positive manner by motorcade of the decaying diva * himself, and posted on twitter of course. Some skirmishes were reported but did not escalate into anything more significant than the closest thing to a military parade Trump is likely to ever get. Not a lot of horses, but much feces were spread as one could expected from this ragtag army. Can we get a wet clean up on Pennsylvania Ave., please.
The writing of the history of the worst president the US has ever had has begun. Andrew Cuomo has a new book out on the pandemic which he was plugging on The Commonwealth Club's with the guy who wrote Contagion, Scott Burns. Scott's work required much research but differed from our present reality. Contagion was fiction, and as he said, if he had wrote it the way our present pandemic response had turned out, the script would have faced near certain rejection. We are no where near the end of our real pandemic story, but Cuomo has written a history to date which differs from the "great job" version the decaying diva was outlining before he lost the election. I am not sure that the winners always get to write the history, but I am sure that it takes literate sane people with a reputation they would like to keep intact. The "great job" theory of Trump's pandemic response might do better as a farce than a work of history. Cuomo's book is most certain to be well cited by historians and seems to deserve respect.
*Credit Maureen Dowd for Decaying Diva title.