Trump’s last tantrum
The front page of The New York Times probably hit him hard on Wednesday: “Election Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud.”
This one, in the formerly friendly New York Post, probably hit him even harder: “Biden’s popular vote lead over Trump grows to more than 5 million.”
By all accounts, President Trump is behaving as expected in the wake of his loss to Joe Biden. Rather than accept the election results like a grown man, he’s throwing a hissy fit, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump may have to be dragged out of the White House like a toddler at a birthday party.
Trump has never cared much that he’s president and has presidenting to do, but it says a lot that in a week when America added 1 million new COVID- 19 cases, the president has been in hiding since hearing of Biden’s win.
Rather than help the country move on, he and his team have been busy filing ill- fated lawsuits contesting the election results. According to The Washington Post, even his closest confidants — Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Corey
Lewandowski — have privately said they are worried about the merits of the suits.
Rather than prepare the next president for the task of handling a deadly pandemic, Trump is busy tweeting up a storm from his last days of comfort in the White House. And what he’s tweeting is pretty revealing as to what his mental state is at the moment. To put it kindly, he’s losing it.
He’s tweeting out baseless conspiracy theories about fraudulent votes, many of which have been labeled “disputed” by Twitter, including this one on the day Biden was announced the winner: “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!”
He’s frenetically retweeting his friends at Fox News, like Lou Dobbs, who are also baselessly claiming the election was “stolen.”
He even tweeted today that the polls may have been “illegal”: “The Fake Pollsters at @ ABC/@ washingtonpost produced a possibly illegal suppression Poll just before the Election showing me down 17 points in Wisconsin when, in fact, on Election Day, the race was even — & we are now preparing to win the state. Many such ‘ deplorable’ instances!”
Biden won Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes.
And in perhaps the least dignified and most humiliating instance of sheer desperation, Trump is even retweeting his own tweets. You almost feel bad for the guy — almost. Except this tantrum isn’t just sad and pathetic; it’s dangerous. It’s in these moments where power vacuums are created and bad actors take advantage. And despite Trump’s best efforts to befriend them, America still has many enemies around the world who are downright giddy over the chaos Trump is trying to create around the election.
Naturally, Trump is enticing them to make the most of it, firing several senior officials at the Pentagon and replacing them with Trump loyalists at exactly the worst time.
Because of his fragile ego, Trump is also refusing to give Biden the national security and intelligence briefings that incoming presidents usually get after winning an election.
And according to a Biden official, Trump is withholding “access to the federal agencies, the employees of the federal agencies and their expertise, and the nonpublic information of the executive branch that will help read the incoming administration into all the important work that is ongoing, to be able to help make informed policy decisions and deliver on what the American people have voted for.”
And Trump praised a dangerous remark by his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, promising a “smooth transition ... to a second Trump administration.”
And he has enlisted Congressional Republicans — who may need reminding they took an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to hold Trump’s hand — to aid and abet his public tantrum.
Sen. Ted Cruz called the election process “lawless.” Sen. Lindsey Graham claimed, “Philadelphia elections are as crooked as a snake.” And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, falsely, “President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet.”
In his final days in a job he was demonstrably terrible at, Trump has proven he has no concern for the country he still governs, or ensuring it can smoothly transition to a new administration while it is suffering from a COVID- 19 spike and possible national security threats.
Whether he ever accepts the reality of his loss or not, the country is moving on without him, with some deeply felt parting words: “What a loser.”