The White House order was imperative: no federal cooperation with the elected president. No handover, and if the officials sent by Biden want to get into the offices, don’t let them in. The president-elect’s officials cannot begin the transitional stage of power. Joe Biden does not rule out taking legal action against the Trump administration, accusing him of illegally obstructing the transition process opening.
The wall created by Donald Trump in order to block the inevitable conclusion of these elections cannot contain the wave of votes, 5 million more won by his political rival. Trump, the defeated president, does not give up. He is trying to de-legitimize his opponent’s victory. He is keeping up his fiction; it’s a bit like Charlie Chaplin in the role of “The Great Dictator”. The Emperor has no clothes on and is laughed at by his servants, and obstinately shouts that the election has been rigged, and that he has won it anyway. He ordered the Attorney General to investigate alleged electoral fraud, without evidence or a clue that it has actually occurred, and the Attorney General has agreed. Richard Pilger, the federal prosecutor responsible for investigating electoral integrity, resigned in protest, accusing Barr of having failed to comply with the “political line of non-interference” in investigations into possible electoral frauds which are also the responsibility of individual states, which establish and control their own electoral rules.
Trump is fighting to reverse Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona – states that gave the Democratic candidate the necessary number of votes to win the presidential election. So far, the White House has filed or has threatened legal actions in several states (a dozen complaints filed, some already rejected for lack of evidence) hoping to change the result with disqualification and recount. But so far, his actions have not produced results: he must bring the evidence, and in any case, even if he finds it, it is not certain that this would be enough for him to claim victory.
This president, in constant quest of his personal success, has politicized everything: from the coronavirus to the vaccine, from the economy to sport–as happened to Colin Kaepernick–and he sees plots and sinister maneuvers against him everywhere. He launched this presidential campaign years ago, when he cried that President Barack Obama was not a US citizen; in this way he found millions of voters who would then support him by unleashing the dormant racism of ultra-right movements. These are actions that daily corrode democracy and divide the country more and more, and that are reinforced by the surreal buffoonery of Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republican majority in the Senate who endorses Trump’s refusal to accept defeat. This theory was immediately adopted also by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who during a press conference at the State Department replied to those who pointed out that the world is congratulating President-elect Joe Biden, that he “is working on a smooth transition to the second Trump administration.”
A sycophantic president and his complacent courtiers are trampling the Constitution and the most fundamental tenets of democracy. This is probably the blackest political moment in modern US history. So far, only four Republican senators: Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have congratulated the president-elect. Such attitudes have outraged even some of the president’s allies, such as Fox News, which for four years has allowed itself to be the megaphone for Trump’s lies. Yesterday, when Kayleigh McEnany, the spokesperson for the White House, took part in a television show and continued to push the false electoral narrative accusing the Democrats of “fraud and illegal votes”, the host Neil Cavuto interrupted her with, “Unless you have more details to support what you are saying, I can’t continue to air your statements” and cut off her microphone. Twitter, YouTube and Facebook also removed thousands of fake profiles aimed at promoting unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud. Almost all of the sites were created by Steve Bannon, who had managed to collect a total of 2.45 million followers, with 10 million people who had read them.
Joe Biden, despite all the obstacles that the Trump administration is putting in his way, is running smoothly. Today, he defended Obamacare while the Supreme Court justices met to decide its future. Biden has argued that it is inappropriate to eliminate Americans’ insurance coverage during a pandemic, with millions of people affected by the virus. It was a remote talk with the Justices, but according to the first rumors, it seems to have opened a breach in the highest judicial body in the country.
Translated by Alessandra Loiero
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