None other than the National Review, the bulwark of conservative journalism, founded by William F. Buckley in the 1950’s, published an editorial yesterday that blasts the unwarranted and misguided legal maneuverings of Trump and his enablers to overturn the results of the election. I have included the link to the entire editorial below, which is well worth the read. My favorite paragraph is [the underlining is mine]:
“There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes (some jurisdictions, bizarrely, take weeks to complete their initial count), but make no mistake: The chief driver of the post-election contention of the past several weeks is the petulant refusal of one man to accept the verdict of the American people. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings, rather than objectively considering the evidence and reacting as warranted.”1
My question is simply, if the National Review can call out Trump for all of this crap that is doing nothing but to weaken our democracy and recognizing that Trump’s team has produced virtually no evidence to back up his wild claims of voter fraud, why the hell can’t the Republican leadership find their collective spines and do the same thing? I’m no psychologist but it sure seems to me that there is a somewhat ‘codependent’ relationship here. Trump, being the egomaniac he is, craves adulation and to be the center of attention. The Republicans, are addicted to power and recognizing they are the minority party, feed Trump’s ego so they can feed off of his ‘base.’ The whole thing seems pretty sick and certainly doesn’t seem like it’s in the best interests of the country. And the really sad and somewhat ironic thing is that the ‘base’ are just pawns in this whole sordid exercise.
So, given that Trump’s team have lost or withdrawn almost 40 lawsuits and even Republican led states are certifying the results in Biden’s favor, I am getting less worried about Trump staying in office. I think, in spite of the rhetoric, even he understands that his days are numbered. The real question is, ‘how much damage will Trump do on the way out the door?’ He continues to purge top defense officials at the Pentagon and replace them with Trump loyalists. With less than 60 days left in office, there is no rational explanation for this. It’s certainly a gift to our adversaries – Putin, Xi, and every terrorist group in the world are loving it.
One of the findings of the 9/11 commission was that the delays in transition during the Bush-Gore fiasco contributed to the US vulnerability resulting in the terrorist attacks. Recently, Iran’s top nuclear scientist was assassinated and Iran has vowed revenge. No one has claimed responsibility but the attack has all of the hallmarks of an Israeli hit. So, whether it was Israel or the US or even someone else, Iran will believe that the US at least knew about it and approved it, even if we didn’t carry it out. So, instead of Trump doing everything he can to ensure the US defense posture is as strong as possible during the transition, he is doing exactly the opposite. Why should we expect anything? This has been a consistent pattern over the last four years.
On the good news side, today Biden and Harris began getting access (finally) to the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) which is a daily assessment provided to the president and vice-president from the intelligent agencies outlining potential threats and global issues. It is widely known that Trump had little time for these briefings and didn’t really read them. I am quite certain that Biden and Harris will not only read them but will welcome the assessments provided by the intelligence communities. What a concept – a president making informed decisions based upon data provided by experts in their fields!!
And, another piece of good news, Biden will resume the daily press briefings that were abandoned by Trump because he didn’t like his press people to have to answer hard questions. The icing on the cake is that the entire communications organization is composed of very talented women. Jan 20th can’t come soon enough.
So, a big ‘thank you’ to the National Review for standing up and calling out Trump for what he is. The end of their editorial is much better than what I would write.
“Trump’s most reprehensible tactic has been to attempt, somewhat shamefacedly, to get local Republican officials to block the certification of votes and state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in clear violation of the public will. This has gone nowhere, thanks to the honesty and sense of duty of most of the Republicans involved, but it’s a profoundly undemocratic move that we hope no losing presidential candidate ever even thinks of again.
Getting defeated in a national election is a blow to the ego of even the most thick-skinned politicians and inevitably engenders personal feelings of bitterness and anger. What America has long expected is that losing candidates swallow those feelings and at least pretend to be gracious. If Trump’s not capable of it, he should at least stop waging war on the outcome”1
When Trump leaves office I believe he will start his “Jihad” with all the anarchist that support him. He will do anything to get revenge on all the people who did not support him. The 25th Amendment is useless if one side of Congress is in collusion with the President. What really needs to change is that the President should never be above the law especially if there are crimes against the country and these crimes should be judged impartially with no political bias.