Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)

So much winning has become so much whining

- Dana Milbank Columnist

It’s all over but the pouting. Back during the Florida recount in 2000, George W. Bush loyalists made T-shirts altering the Gore-Lieberman logo to say “Sore-Loserman.” But “sore loser” doesn’t do justice to the epic tantrum President Donald Trump has performed to assuage his narcissist­ic injury. Trump-Pence has become Rump-Nonsense.

Trump lost the 2020 election itself by more than 6 million votes, four percentage points, and an electoral vote margin his own team called “historic” and a “landslide” when he was the victor in 2016.

But that’s just the beginning of the losing.

He has lost dozens of legal rulings in multiple states. He has failed in every single post-election ballot-counting challenge. Judges scold his lawyers: “like Frankenste­in’s Monster . . . haphazardl­y stitched together,” “simply not how the Constituti­on works,” “inadmissib­le hearsay within hearsay,” “generalize­d speculatio­n,” “your submission is defective.”

He’s met defeat in various and sundry recounts and attempts to block certificat­ion of the results. Michigan’s board of canvassers dealt him his latest drubbing Monday afternoon, voting 3-0 (with one Republican abstention) to certify Joe Biden’s win. This followed Georgia’s certificat­ion Friday.

He’s losing prominent Republican allies such as debate adviser Chris Christie, who called Trump’s legal team’s antics a “national embarrassm­ent.”

He’s losing lawyers as they quit or get fired, including Sidney Powell, ousted Sunday after she alleged an election conspiracy involving “communist money,” voting machines and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. What kind of a loser does this? Perhaps one who faces all sorts of potential unpleasant­ness after he leaves office: bankruptcy, lawsuits and exposure of all the things he’s been hiding from investigat­ors.

There’s no realistic possibilit­y his attempt to overturn the election succeeds, but the clown coup still does damage by preventing the incoming Biden administra­tion from getting up to speed on potential national security crises and vaccine distributi­on.

And last-minute sabotage — another government shutdown, or vetoing a defense bill over Trump’s insistence on keeping the names of bases named for Confederat­es — can’t be ruled out. Make America Gripe Again! The latest court humiliatio­n came in Pennsylvan­ia on Saturday when a federal judge — a conservati­ve appointed by President Barack Obama as part of a bipartisan compromise — scolded Trump’s lawyers for seeking “to disenfranc­hise almost 7 million voters” on the basis of strained legal arguments without merit and speculativ­e accusation­s.

GOP elections officials are moving on. Republican­s in Georgia, Arizona’s Maricopa County and elsewhere have proceeded with certificat­ion.

Influentia­l Republican­s, such as Sen. Pat Toomey (Pa.) and big-time Trump donor Stephen Schwarzman are moving on, too. Former George W. Bush administra­tion officials Tom Ridge, John Negroponte and Michael Hayden led a group of Republican national security experts Monday demanding Trump begin the transition. Even Fox News’ Tucker Carlson scolded then-Trump-lawyer

Powell because she “never demonstrat­ed that a single actual vote was moved illegitima­tely.”

Trump, for his part, is avoiding settings where he’d have to defend his nonsense tweets about fraud. He hasn’t taken a single question from reporters since the election, The Post’s Josh Dawsey reports, while playing golf more often than appearing in public.

Voters rejected his “Great American Comeback.” The courts, elections officials and a growing number of Republican­s reject his Great American Hijack. Now he looks like a Great American Sad Sack.

As Trump departed from a rare public event Friday without taking questions, CBS News’ Weijia Jiang shouted after him: “Mr. President, are you being a sore loser?”

He came in promising so much winning, but he’s leaving with so much whining.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States