Trump, allies make false argument over transition
President’s team alleges similarities to handover in ’16
WASHINGTON— It’s not just President-elect Joe Biden’s transition that’s under a microscope.
President Donald Trump and his allies are harking back to his transition four years ago to make a false argument that his presidency was denied a fair chance for a clean launch. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out the case from the White House podium last week and the same idea has been floated by Trump’s personal lawyer and his former director of national intelligence.
“It’s worth remembering that this president was never given an orderly transition of power. His presidency was never accepted,” McEnany told reporters who questioned the Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate with the Biden transition.
But the situations are far different.
The day after her defeat in 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded.
“Donald Trump is going to be our president,” she said. “Weowe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
The next day, President Barack Obama, who had portrayed Trump as an existential threat to the nation, invited the president-elect to the White House and visited with him in the Oval Office. Obama’s aides offered help to Trump’s incoming staffers.
“My number one priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful,” Obama said.
During his inaugural address, Trump thanked Obama and his wife, Michelle, “for their gracious aid throughout this transition” and called them “magnificent.”
Trump’s team is not wrong that his own transition was chaotic, but the disarray in many ways was of his own doing.
Trump fired the head of his transition, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and abandoned months of planning in favor of a Cabinet hiring process that at times resembled a reality show. His team ignored offers of help from the outgoing Obama administration.
That’s a far cry from the description issued by McEnany as pressure mounts for Trump to concede and for his administration to begin cooperating with Biden’s transition team. Among other things, Biden is being denied access to the presidential daily intelligence briefing and to detailed briefings on the vaccine distribution plan as COVID-19
deaths in the U.S. eclipse 256,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Trumphas refused to concede, instead making baseless claims of electoral fraud and trying long shot legal challenges that analysts say risk undermining the nation’s democratic traditions.
In 2016, despite his claims, Trump did receive standard cooperation during the transition.
But Trump’s team largely ignored advice from Obama staffers, leaving briefing books unopened and ignoring special iPads loaded with materials.
A potential transition plan worked on for months by Christie was cast aside. He was
dismissed from his post as part of a long-running feud with the president’s son-in-law and future senior White House adviser Jared Kushner.
Christie, in his recent autobiography, wrote that 30 binders were discarded and that members of Trump’s team “got rid of guidance that would have made their candidate an immensely more effective president” and “stole from the man they’d just helped elect the launch he so richly deserved.”
McEnany and others have claimed that Trump was undermined by an FBI investigation that was opened in the summer of 2016 into possible election
interference, a probe that was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller the following May after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, in a news conference last week, claimed the FBI “made up the Russia collusion plot” that damaged Trump and “cost our country $40 million.” Ric Grenell, Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, has said that what Obama offered “was not a peaceful transition” because the FBI was already working to undermine Trump.
After nearly two years, Mueller found insufficient evi
dence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with conspiring with Russia to sway the election. Throughout his term, Trump has framed the investigation as part of a “witch hunt.”
Obamahadnorole in directing the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign or in impeding Trump’s transition to the presidency. Though Obama was aware that his intelligence officials were investigating Russian interference, and had concerns about Trump and his background, the investigative decisions were made not by him but by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.