Here’s a thought to ponder, not that I am predicting; just offering this item as a potential development that could really upset damn near everything we’ve been saying about Donald J. Trump.
Just suppose …
That after Congress ratifies the Electoral College victory that President-elect Biden won on Nov. 3, Trump throws in the towel.
That he decides there really is no path to “overturn” the results of an election that Biden won handily.
That he gives up his lawless and feckless fight and says — through gritted teeth — that Joe Biden is the next president of the United States. He wouldn’t offer congratulations or good wishes. He would just, um, say that Biden won the election.
Do you think it’s possible? Do you think that someone who is as mercurial and behaves as bizarrely as Trump is capable of just surrendering to the reality that we all know exists?
Sigh … I don’t think so, either. But with this idiot, you just never know.
Readers of this blog know, how I love parades, patriotic music, pomp and circumstance, the sight of all those Old Glories flying in the breeze.
We’re going to get a lot of such pageantry on Jan. 20. That’s when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office as president and vice president of the United States of America.
This upcoming inaugural is going to be different than practically all that have preceded it. There won’t be as much pomp and circumstance as before. The coronavirus pandemic is going to limit crowd size and the scope of the celebration.
That won’t matter to me.
What does matter is that President Biden and Vice President Harris take their oaths and get down immediately to the task of repairing the damage being inflicted right now, today, in real time by Donald John Trump.
That means when the clock strikes noon EST on the 20th of January, Chief Justice John Roberts is going to extend his hand and say to Joe Biden, “Congratulations, Mr. President.”
I plan to watch every minute of that glorious event. I also plan to have a box of tissue handy. I expect fully to shed a tear of joy as I watch the new president take charge.
I do love the pageantry of it all. This year, the circumstances of Donald Trump’s angry, embittered, unlawful exit only lends to the emotion I am bound to feel as the Seditionist/Liar/Narcissist/Sore Loser in Chief exits the stage.
I am utterly astounded beyond belief at what is transpiring inside the White House — my house, your house, our house — as it regards the con man masquerading as president of the United States.
Donald J. Trump has demanded that Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger “find” 11,800 votes that would overturn that state’s presidential verdict in November. Georgia sent its electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden. Trump wants those votes for himself and is asking Georgia’s top election official to break the law.
That all by itself is a violation of the law.
We have a lawless, amoral, narcissistic carnival barker seeking to subvert our democratic process. It might fall into the category of treason, but it looks for all the world like sedition, which is another way of seeking to overthrow government processes.
Donald Trump’s fomenting the latest Big Lie about “widespread voter fraud” is just beyond every pale I can imagine.
However, I am going to offer a glimmer of good news. Trump’s effort to overturn the election will fail. Congress on Wednesday will ratify what the Electoral College has certified, that Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were elected Nov. 3. There will be an inauguration on Jan. 20. President Biden and Vice President Harris will take office on that day.
Donald Trump and VP Mike Pence will be gone.
That clear and unambiguous path out of this sheer madness gives me reason for hope that we will survive this horrific drama.
The New York Times has published a story that begins with this paragraph:
President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,” during an hourlong telephone conversation with him on Saturday, according to audio excerpts from the conversation.
Now, let’s ponder the consequence of that news article brings to us.
To me it tells of a president seeking to coerce a state election official to change the outcome of an election and to threaten him if he doesn’t do what the president is demanding.
Have you ever heard of such a travesty? Can anyone recall any president in any era of any political party doing the kind of thing that Donald Trump has done in the wake of an election he lost … by a lot?
What we have on our hands — for the next 16 days — is a president who is out of control. He’s also out of his mind.
Every move he makes to overturn an election, to subvert democracy, to violate the very oath he took to defend the Constitution and abide by the law only ratifies what many millions of us have known since before the guy became president.
It is that he presents a dire danger to the very nation that elected him as its president.
We have corrected that grievous error and I am awaiting the moment when Joseph Biden takes the oath and rescues this country from the madman he will succeed.
Is it a crime for a public official to encourage another public official to break the law?
I kinda think it is.
What do you suppose Donald Trump was doing in that hour-long phone conversation with the Georgia secretary of state, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes cast for Trump so that he could reverse the outcome in Georgia of the 2020 presidential election?
From my vantage point, Donald Trump was berating the secretary of state into breaking the law.
This is further proof — as if anyone needed it — of Donald Trump’s supreme unfitness for the job he is going to surrender in just 17 days to President-elect Joe Biden.
The Republican congressional cabal of kooks today grew by 11 members.
I cannot believe these once-serious-minded individuals have done this, but they have declared their intention to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory when the Senate and the House of Representatives meet Wednesday to, um, certify the results.
They have joined their moronic Missouri colleague, Josh Hawley, in filing some sort of empty-headed protest over Biden’s victory, citing “widespread voter fraud” for which no one on Earth has presented a shred of evidence even existed.
Here’s the best part: One of the Gang of 11 dipshi** is none other than Sen. Ted Cruz, the Houston Republican whom I long ago dubbed the Cruz Missile.
To his credit, John Cornyn, Texas’s senior U.S. Republican senator, didn’t sign on to this idiotic ploy.
What these clowns/morons/know-nothings/idiots are seeking to do is commit what I consider an act of sedition. They are staging an open rebellion against our democratic process. They have joined 140 of their House GOP colleagues in contesting an election that Joe Biden won — and Donald J. Trump — lost in what election officials have declared to be the most secure election in U.S. history.
The 11 GOP Senate nimrods want to delay the outcome for 10 days while they conduct an audit of the process. Good ever-lovin’ grief, dudes! The courts have tossed out every one of Trump’s own challenges to the veracity of the election. The Electoral College has met as prescribed by the Constitution and declared that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will take office on Jan. 20.
We have a bizarre drama playing out on the world stage. Republican members of Congress want to make some kind of show about their resistance to a Democrat winning election over one of their guys. What they are revealing to the world is an absolute disregard for the democratic process, which until this election cycle was thought to be an impenetrable barrier against the kind of dangerous insurrection that appears to be taking shape.
Finally, think also of this reality: The individual for whom they are embarking on this moronic mission, Donald J. Trump, is encouraging them to commit what I consider to be a subversion of the electoral process we all should honor.
Americans will not get to witness President-elect Joe Biden and Jill Biden arrive at the White House prior to the inauguration. There will be no scenes of Donald and Melania Trump greeting them with smiles, handshakes and hugs.
There will be no informal briefing between the outgoing and incoming presidents. The current and future first ladies won’t tour the residence, with Melania Trump showing Jill Biden where to find the linens.
No. All of that is tossed into the crapper.
When Barack Obama was leaving the White House in 2017, he and Michelle Obama greeted the Trumps at the White House. They mugged for the cameras and went inside. Obama talked to Trump about what to expect. Their wives visited informally. It was all done according to long-established custom.
It’s not that the Bidens don’t know their way around the people’s house. They’ve been there many times already, visiting many presidents … not to mention the one with whom Joe Biden worked for eight years, the aforementioned Barack Obama.
I will miss seeing the photos. Still, it’s probably just as well, given the river of bad blood that has flown from Trump in the wake of his loss to Biden in the election.
The Trumps will be gone. The Bidens will walk in and make themselves at home. That’s OK with me.
We can thank the nation’s founders tonight for a federal judicial ruling that puts an end to a loony lawsuit filed by a loony member of Congress, Rep. Louie Gohmert, an East Texas Republican.
Gohmert wanted Vice President Mike Pence to preside over a joint session of Congress next week … and then take it upon himself to throw out the Electoral College certification that Joe Biden was elected president of the United States.
What did the founders get right? They created an independent federal judiciary! Tonight, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle tossed Gohmert’s lawsuit into the trash barrel.
I should say right here that Judge Kernodle, of Texas, is a Trump appointee. Yep, the man who would benefit directly from Gohmert’s idiocy selected this jurist, who then followed his oath of office directly and cleanly. As The Hill reported: The judge found that Gohmert suffered no legally recognizable injury.
A friend of mine posted something on Facebook that reminds me of something: Donald Trump at one time wanted a North Korea/Soviet/communist China-style military parade in Washington, D.C.
Does anyone else remember that one? I don’t believe he got it. He had slathered it in some feel-good rhetoric about wanting to honor our servicemen and women. Good grief. He could have done that simply by visiting them regularly and paying appropriate tribute by saluting their service in a manner befitting the commander in chief.
He always seemed to step on his own lines, though … such as the time he offered a Purple Heart recipient his “congratulations” for, um, being injured in battle! Jeez, Mr. POTUS. The warrior didn’t seek the medal.
I recall in 2018 when Trump visited France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. He saw the military parade the French staged and, by golly, he wanted to do something like that back home. He got some pushback, not surprisingly.
It didn’t come to pass. Which is just fine with me.
Those COVID-19 relief checks are starting to arrive and it is producing heated exchanges between at least two people, one of whom is a friend of mine, the other is a total stranger.
These individuals differ on their views about Donald J. Trump. My friend is an anti-Trump guy; the other fellow is a Trumpkin/Trumpster/Trumpenator.
The Trump guy is angry at my friend, apparently, because he is accepting his stimulus payment, even though he opposes Trump’s policies.
Hmm. The stranger in this fight says my friend shouldn’t be taking “Trump’s money.”
Whoa! I reminded my friend, who didn’t need reminding, that he isn’t taking “Trump’s money.” It didn’t come out of his pocket. It came out of his pocket, and mine, and his Trump-loving friend’s pocket. It’s our money.
My friend laughed out loud. He did remind his Trumpkin pal that the relief package was approved by a healthy majority in both congressional chambers, it was a “bipartisan” effort. He also took note of ow Trump took no active part in the negotiations with Democrats.
I fear we have cheapened our deep and intense political and philosophical differences to this kind of childish level. I also would be willing to wager that other “friends” — in addition to the fellows I have just described — have ensued across the nation.
