Quote of the week: “My family voted for him, donated to him and are now being thrown under the bus by him.” – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, speaking for himself and the 22% of Americans who voted for Donald Trump
Week #202 of the Trump Era began on Friday when Mr. Raffensperger, in his official capacity, certified the election results in Georgia as a win for the guy who got the most votes. Bigly sad for Donald Trump, he was not that guy in a State he expected to win, and threw one of his patented Trumptrums when Raffensperger did his job, prompting Trump to vilify the man to the point where Trump supporters viciously harassed him and his family and issued multiple death threats, demanding a recount in a State Trump would wind up losing 3 times before the week was out.
And speaking of certifying votes, several Republican legislators from Michigan met with Trump at the White House on Friday, where the President tried to persuade them to refuse to certify Biden’s win in their State, a request they denied the following day after taking the measure of the man in the Oval Office, perhaps finally seeing him for exactly who he is for the first time.
Who Trump is these days is the same old vicious and incompetent predator he has always been, with an added dollop of grasping desperation, when he Tweeted this: “Did you watch my legal team’s press conference yesterday? They were SPECTACULAR,” referring to Rudy’s fiasco of a press conference in Pennsylvania on Thursday, when both Rudy and his cheap black hair dye melted down in a public display of incomprehensible buffoonery that was unmatched in Presidential election history. Until a few days later, that is.
Pfizer Pharmaceutical applied for emergency certification of their Covid-19 vaccination from the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, so that vaccinations against the pandemic that took 263,00 lives before the week was out could commence as soon as possible to prevent further infections. Two Americans it won’t prevent from contracting Covid-9 are Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, and Donald Trump Jr, who announced he tested positive a few days prior, was experiencing “mild symptoms” self-quarantining, his public presence missed about as much as a migraine.
On Saturday in Washington, construction began on Joe Biden’s inauguration stage, sounding to Trump more and more like the building of his gallows, so perhaps that explains his disinterest in participating in the video meeting of the G-20 nations, where he gave the opening session exactly 13 minutes of his attention before whipping out his phone and tweeting more baseless claims about voter fraud in his ongoing effort to overturn the 2020 election. By 10AM, Trump departed to go play golf, skipping a special side conference that was focused on the coronavirus crisis that’s exploding in scores of countries, including our own, as evidenced by Saturday’s deployment of the National Guard to help with (!) “a morgue crisis” as dead bodies piled up with no place to store them.
Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, Trump’s attorney Sidney Powell gave Rudy some stiff competion in the Worst Lawyer Ever competition when her lawsuit was dropkicked out of court by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann when his scathing (if somewhat understated) decision said “One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption. That has not happened.”
Small wonder that Rudy Giuliani announced that day that “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.”
Undaunted, Ms. Powell released her own statement to the press after a week of selling her unbelievably delusional accusations to anyone with a microphone and a williingness to listen to drivel: “The evidence I’m compiling is overwhelming that this software tool was used to shift millions of votes from President Trump and other Republican candidates to Biden and other Democrat candidates. We are proceeding to prepare our lawsuit and plan to file it this week. It will be epic.”
Needless to say, no such evidence, epic or otherwise, has been presented to any authorities anywhere, with experts in every related field, whether it be the law, electioneering, politics or computer technology, unanimously condemning her dangerous and irresponsible fantasies masquerading as facts, knowing that too many of those who voted for Trump will cling to her bogus accusations like a toddler clings to a teddy bear.
Then we heard of the Michigan legislators being wined and dined by Trump at the White House on Uncle Sam’s dime, including $500 bottles of Dom Pérignon champagne, which apparently wasn’t enough when the Michiganders turned down his request to help him steal an election he lost by 154,188 votes in their State, and 6 million nationwide. People can be so touchy when they are determined to remain on the fun side of prison bars.
Media pundits began referring to this and other recent examples of Trump’s post-election behavior as “The Unravelling,” which strikes one as an arbitrary designation after almost 4 years of watching the man and wondering exactly when it was that he was raveled. Perhaps they borrowed from these pages, using the handy “even for him!” to describe the instances of insane behavior that eclipse his usual craycray.
Speaking of unravelling, in his latest instance of smashing the furniture on the way out the door, Trump announced that the US is formally exiting the Open Skies Agreement with Russia that helps keep peace in Europe, even though our European allies greatly value the opportunities the pact affords them to collect aerial reconnaissance information they wouldn’t necessarily have access to outside of the treaty. To lock Biden into this dangerous Anti-NATO policy, Tump ordered the sophisticated and costly OC-135B planes used in conducting said aerial reconnaissance (!) to be destroyed.
On Monday, Trump finally allowed the General Services Administration to commence the formal Transition Process, giving President Elect Biden’s team full access to to every Federal agency, and to the crucial Covid-19 Response Team, even as Trump still loudly claimed he won the election and that his crack legal team would soon expose the fraud that everyone on Earth knows does not exist, and deliver him a second term. Biden’s team wasted no time reflecting on Trump’s blather and went to work to make up for the weeks lost to Trump’s pathetic denial of reality.
The Silence of the Lambs, meanwhile, continued unabated as the great majority of prominent Republican leaders refused to acknowledge Trump’s defeat, even after journalist Carl Bernstein released a list of 21 Republican Senators who privately hold Trump in the utter contempt he so richly deserves, but lack the backbone to speak out and save their country from further bitter division. Those few Republicans willing to speak out are being either roundly vilified by Republicans for being loyal to their country instead of the Republican Party, or lavishly praised by Democrats for being able to admit that math is real.
Then Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams warned that all Americans, even those in the White House, should follow CDC guidelines and avoid large gatherings during what he called a “dire point” in the pandemic, fearing that large Thanksgiving gatherings would cause even greater sickness and death in a sick and dying country.
On Tuesday the President’s daily briefing teams got the joyful news that someone would actually be listening to them and absorbing all the information they provide daily when they learned that from now on they would be briefing 2 men each morning, one with the attention span and intellect of a toddler, and the President Elect of the United States, Joe Biden, who also began revealing his Cabinet picks later that day in a presentation that reintroduced to America the outstanding ability, unquestioned integrity and unambiguous loyalties we have come to expect in our highest levels of government (pre-Trump of course).
Then, as if to clearly illustrate the difference between a Biden appointee and a Trump appointee, Secretary of The Treasury Steve Mnuchin announced he will hide $455 billion in unspent Cares Act funding from the Biden Administration by putting it into the Treasury’s general account, the monies he and Trump “put aside” to be used at their own discretion (which is illegal since only Congress is allowed to allocate funds).
His presumed successor, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, will need authorization from Congress to access this money for its intended purpose, voted by Congress to be used to rescue small businesses devastated by the Coronavirus pandemic, and to restore the millions of American jobs these crippled businesses provided. Chalk this up as one more effort to damage America out of spite as 2,100 more Americans died of Covid-19 that very day.
Then Trump announced a press conference, his first since losing the election, except that it was not a press conference at all. After marching out into the briefing room podium with Mike Pence and his usual mask-free toady entourage in tow, presumably to speak of the transition, the economy and the worsening pandemic, the President instead launched into claiming credit for the recent rise in the Stock Market that Biden’s election caused, and lasted only 64 seconds before running out of steam and stalking out, to the obvious surprise of his loyal minions as well as the assembled press corps, leaving the world scratching its head wondering what the hell that was all about.
On Wednesday, speaking of Trump’s dumbass entourage, Peter Navarro, he of the mouthful of titles including Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy and National Defense Production Act Policy Coordinator, went full Trumpbecile when he said “We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption there will be a second Trump term. I think it’s really important, before peoples’ heads explode here, to understand that what we seek here is verifiable ballots, certifiable ballots and an investigation into what are growing numbers of allegations of fraud under signed affidavits by witnesses.” No word from the White House if that mouthful of fantasy earned Mr. Navarro another title, perhaps Special Assistant to Sidney Powell.
As health officials reported the staggering figure of 2 million new Covid cases in the past 14 days (including the latest of Trump’s personal victims, Strategic Advisor to the Trump 2020 Campaign Boris Epshteyn), with contact tracing collapsing all over the country due to the sheer volume of cases, we learned that Trump has been very busy.
No, not busy addressing this unfolding catastrophe and finally taking his job seriously, but pardoning his criminal former National Security Advisor Michel Flynn publicly, and very quiely closing an infamous South Texas warehouse full of refugee cages, which the Border Patrol announced will be “undergoing renovations” (destroying evidence), perhaps an unacknowledged admission that Trump’s concentration camps are bound to create a monumental scandal and a flurry of criminal indictments once the Biden Administration takes a hard look at what’s been going on in these secretive camps.
While Israel was bracing for the fallout of Trump attacking Iran before he leaves office, something Trump has been trying to convince his resistant military commanders to do, Rudy Giuliani distracted the nation from reality once again by topping his runny hair dye stunt, this time at ”a hearing” before Pennsylvania’s State Senate Majority Policy Committee, a forum held at the (!) Wyndham Gettysburg Hotel instead of Pennsylvania’s State Capitol Building, and enjoying exactly no official sanction, one more Reality TV sideshow featuring these hapless Republicans, so his “sworn testimony” held all the official weight of a meeting of the Elks Lodge.
Even at his own TV Show, Rudy still could not provide a shred of evidence to back up his crazy lies. He did, however, provide a nifty recap of the interminable 4 years of the Trump Administration when he told Pennsylvanians; ”I know crooks really well. You give them an inch and they take a mile. And you give them a mile and they take your whole country.”
Once again Joe Biden provided a stark contrast to all things Trump when he addressed the nation for Thanksgiving, urging us all not to travel for the holiday, and to forgo large gatherings for the sake of everyone’s health and their very lives, offering his own example of dining with only his wife, daughter and son-law instead of the Biden family’s usual large holiday gathering.
Biden spoke frankly, without sugarcoating or hesitation, about the grave dangers we all face between now and when America can get vaccinated, and promised that his Administration will lead “an America that faces facts.”
Trump’s newly-packed Supreme Court made Biden’s job that much more difficult when they ruled late on Wednesday night that Covid-19 restrictions on the number of attendees at services in houses of worship was unconstitutional, leading to widespread fears that our upcoming religious holiday season will cause a disastrous rise in infections and deaths, dealing a severe blow to the country’s recovery from the pandemic.
On Thanksgiving morning, naturally Trump contradicted Biden, urging Americans to “gather for the holiday” before wasting his 300th day on the golf course and settling in for a celebratory day of whining on Twitter about how very unfair the universe is to him, while yet another prominent Republican contacted Covid-19, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, famous for refusing to ask his citizens to wear a mask. Trump did, however, manage to mention the pandemic that drove him from office when he ignored it and made it 10 times worse by saying (!!) “Don’t let Biden take credit for the vaccine.”
The reality of 13 million Americans infected, 263,000 dead, tens of millions of unemployed, a looming eviction/homelessness crisis, people going hungry in the most bountiful nation on earth, and America’s world standing at an all-time low are things for which Trump takes no blame at all, but instead wants credit for the work of the same scientists he spent the last year viciously attacking.
He punctuated his toxic holiday with a testy exchange with reporters, his first time facing questions from the press since Election Day, telling one correspondent who questioned his wild claims of voter fraud; “Don’t ever talk to the president that way,” then practically screeching “I am the President of the United States!” Therein lies the whole problem, one might add, and Trump’s mini press conference turned into his latest disaster in an unbroken 4 year-long string of disasters.
Today our nation is still ringing with the sound of hundreds of millions of Thanksgiving prayers, when most of the nation expressed profound gratitude that the Trump Era will soon be just a bad memory.