Time to get over this loss
He lost the election. He lost the popular vote. He is poised to lose the Electoral College. He’s lost nearly every legal challenge he’s brought to contest the results. You’d think even Donald Trump would be sick of losing by now.
But no. Mr. Trump continues to grasp at the power that voters decisively told him they no longer want him to have come Jan. 20. He tries to gaslight the nation into disbelieving the plain facts — that President-elect Joe Biden bested him by more than 5 million votes and clinched the Electoral College 306-232, as state after state has confirmed; that there was no massive fraud, as elections and security officials have concluded; and that he has no case for overturning Mr. Biden’s victory, as judge after judge has ruled.
And yet Mr. Trump continues to be propped up by shameless Republican leaders, senators and representatives — the same people who for four years have tolerated his corruption, lies and trashing of the norms that have long sustained our republic, and who now are helping him imperil the most essential of all for our suddenly fragile democracy: the peaceful transfer of power. Some have done more than pastuletters@timesunion.com
sively indulge him — like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., who Georgia’s secretary of state says pressed him to discard valid, legally cast ballots; like that pair of Republican elections officials in Michigan who tried to block certification of the results in predominantly Black areas of Detroit. Where is the accountability for such corruption?
He’s aided, too, by a right-wing media that fuels and feeds on his disinformation, and by a legal team that files one frivolous case after another. Mr. Trump’s defenders say he’s entitled under law to do all this. That’s a deflection. This isn’t normal behavior, not for the president of a nation that has been a model of democracy for 233 years. This insidious assault on citizens’ faith in our elections is unacceptable to anyone who professes to be a patriot.
And it’s all sustained by a round-theclock fundraising machine that churns out appeals filled with hate, fear, division and disinformation, asking people to donate to one losing legal cause or another — even though most of the money isn’t going to the legal battles at all, but to Mr. Trump’s political action committee and the Republican Party. Raising money under false pretenses, raising false hopes of supporters, raising false doubts in the minds of citizens about the integrity of an election — all that’s apparently legal, too, and just fine with Mr. Trump’s political allies.
And all the while, Mr. Trump continues to shrug off the greatest challenge facing the nation: the COVID-19 pandemic. He mentions it now mainly to claim credit for the work of drug companies developing vaccines, but takes no responsibility for the massive failure of leadership in his denial of the danger of a virus that is surging again across the nation and posing renewed threats to Americans and the U.S. economy.
Worse, he’s doing all he can to block Mr. Biden from preparing to assume the presidency. That may be legal, too, but that hardly makes it right. In fact, it’s dangerous, as national security and public health experts keep warning.
Imagine where America might be today if Mr. Trump had put the kind of energy he’s wasting in trying to keep his job into actually doing it. Imagine if he had made as great an effort to rally the country around a campaign to fight the virus as the one he has made to pit Americans against each other. We need some courageous souls in the Republican Party to stop coddling this sore loser, stop waiting for him to work through his rejection and give him the hard truth: You lost. Get over it, and get back to the people’s work in what little time you have left. Then, get out.