Trump refuses to accept Biden’s victory
What happened
Despite election results that showed a clear victory for President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump refused to concede this week, and showed every sign he was digging in for a drawnout battle. Major media outlets called the presidency for Biden on Saturday after he was projected the winner in Pennsylvania; after taking Nevada, he hit 279 electoral votes—nine more than is necessary—and was close to picking up 27 more in Arizona and Georgia to finish with 306. Biden received more than 5 million more popular votes than Trump, and with votes still being counted, posted the highest popularvote percentage of any challenger to an incumbent since 1932— 50.8 percent to Trump’s 47.4 percent. But without evidence, Trump claimed voter fraud and insisted he was the true victor. “BAD THINGS HAPPENED,” he tweeted. Election officials in nearly every state told The New York Times there was no evidence of fraud, and courts rejected a series of Trump lawsuits. Conceding “is not even in our vocabulary right now,” said Trump spokesman Jason Miller. Administration officials were directed not to cooperate with Biden’s transition team, Attorney General William Barr authorized his prosecutors to investigate voter-fraud allegations, and most Republican lawmakers refused to acknowledge Biden’s win. “President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Biden was congratulated by a half-dozen world leaders and moved forward with planning his administration, launching a coronavirus task force and promising to start naming Cabinet picks later this month. The president-elect said Trump’s refusal to concede and begin the transition wouldn’t hamper his planning, and expressed only mild annoyance at the situation. “I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite frankly,” Biden said.
The announcement of Biden’s victory prompted an extraordinary public outpouring of joy. Jubilant citizens honked their horns, cracked champagne, danced in the streets, and jammed public spaces from Times Square to San Francisco’s Castro District. “I feel like I’m free from the clutches of evil,” said New Yorker Lola Faleit, 26. Later they watched as Biden called for an end to a “grim era of demonization” and pledged to be the president “of all Americans” whether they voted for him or not. “This is the time to heal in America,” he said.
What the editorials said
“Thank you, America,” said The Washington Post. In rejecting Donald Trump and handing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “the highest number of votes of any presidential ticket in history,” voters have delivered “a testament to the resilience of American democracy.”
What next?
Trump must “ditch his irresponsible rhetoric,” said WashingtonExaminer .com. If he has real evidence of fraud he should present it. But America doesn’t need “wild and unsubstantiated claims that risk eroding public faith in the election.” The good news for conservatives is that voters gave Biden a mandate to govern from the center, leaving the Senate and the House nearly evenly split. Those of us fearing “a socialist revolution” can “breathe a little easier.”
What the columnists said
Don’t “minimize the enormity of what we accomplished” in ousting a “malignant force,” said Tim Miller in TheBulwark.com. Trump “weaponized the Department of Justice,” fired watchdogs and public servants and replaced them with lackeys, and horribly mismanaged a deadly pandemic. Trump was “a menace unlike anything we’ve seen in this country in a long time.” Biden’s talk of winning the battle for America’s soul “may be corny and oversimplistic,” said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com, “but at the end of the day it’s true.” We’ve shown “we are better than Trump.”
Democrats and the media can spare us the calls for “unity,” said David Harsanyi in NationalReview.com. We conservatives have zero interest in capitulating to those who’d fund late-term abortion with tax dollars, engage with “terror regimes” like Iran, or socialize our health-care system. Politics is not about unity, it’s about “airing grievances.” And “we’ve got plenty.”
Trump is “angry, volatile, disconsolate,” a senior Republican said, and may drag out his doomed legal fight for “a month or more,” said Mike Allen in Axios.com. There is “no chance” he will concede anytime soon, sources say. Some advisers are trying to gently suggest to him Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania and other states is simply too great to overcome, while others are pushing him to keep fighting. Trump can do “profound” damage on his way out the door, said Matt Ford in The New Republic. Out of spite, he could block new coronavirus stimulus spending and efforts to combat the pandemic, withdraw all troops from the Middle East, and fire disfavored agency heads including FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director
Gina Haspel. He might “issue blanket pardons for his adult children and top allies”—or even for himself. Lame ducks rarely take major actions, but “Trump’s detachment from norms” make the coming 10 weeks “a unique concern.”
Americans have rejected an “amoral opportunist” and elected a steady, inclusive, “instinctively optimistic” president who’s “exceptionally qualified to heal a deeply divided nation.”
“Trump’s sad, silly lawsuits won’t overturn the election,” said Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com. Off the record, his own enablers acknowledge that, and say his “pathetic Hail Mary–ing” amounts to “a tantrum” from an overgrown toddler rather than “a creeping authoritarian coup.” But when that toddler and his party have attacked “the legitimacy of voting” and “poisoned significant quadrants of the population against the election results,” it’s “hard to dismiss it as empty theater.”
What we’re seeing is “not merely a temporary bit of playacting,” said Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. “Republicans have declared war on democracy itself.” The goal of their “preposterous lawsuits” and conspiracy mongering is to “light a fire of rage” under Republican voters and paint Biden as “an illegitimate usurper” who must be opposed by any means necessary. It’s “almost impossible to overstate how toxic this all is.”