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(CNN) – Even Donald Trump, the great truth-twister, couldn’t hold reality at bay forever.
After nearly three weeks of his ludicrous lawsuits and corrosive attacks on democracy, a cascade of momentous events on Monday erased the president’s fantasy that he would have a second term.
In the most significant and symbolic sign that it is over for Trump, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy, heeding the inevitability of constitutional processes, has finally ignited the administrative machinery that will formally transfer power to President-elect Joe Biden.
The statutory transition will unlock millions of dollars in funding and force the administration to grant access and briefings to the incoming president-elect team. Most importantly, it will allow Biden representatives to meet with government health officials to learn how best to step up efforts to address the Covid-19 disaster that is ravaging the nation.
Yet even before Murphy’s belated maneuver, Biden had engineered a tangible shift in implicit power from the current administration to the next, revealing a series of high-profile Cabinet appointments. In the process, he turned his White House from a theoretical proposal to a tangible vision of the policies and leadership style that will set the course for the United States beginning January 20 of next year.
Biden’s decisions, including former aide Antony Blinken as secretary of state, signaled that the president-elect plans an era of serious, no-show rule after years of Trump dictates by tweets and a cabinet made up of designated individuals where he could. trust to be honored.
Biden also plans to elect former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen as Treasury secretary, according to two sources familiar with his plans.
Trump offered his clearest indication so far that he understands that his presidency is ending when he tweeted that he had told his team to do what is necessary “regarding initial protocols.” However, given his past behavior, repeated denials of his defeat, and attempts to damage Biden’s legitimacy, there will be serious questions about whether Trump will fully cooperate with the transition.
His remaining two months in office, during which he will maintain the institutional power of the presidency, leave him plenty of time to attempt to sabotage the Biden administration.
However, Trump’s outrageous attempt to disenfranchise millions of Americans is doomed because election officials and state courts largely did their duty and rejected his baseless claims of fraud. During the president’s most dangerous attack on the institutions of the American political system, the center resisted.
‘It’s the end of the road’
Biden, like he did in the Democratic primaries and general election campaigns, continues to advance relentlessly, creating his own sense of inevitability, ignoring the president’s tantrums. He took advantage of the fact that power always flows into a new, ambitious administration that has yet to be tested by unstable compromises or the dents left by daily crises.
The president, meanwhile, presiding over an administration exhausted and humiliated by his defeat, spent the last few days watching more and more Republicans walk away in dismay at his savage legal challenges. CNN’s Jim Acosta reported Monday that Trump had become frustrated with Rudy Giuliani and his Keystone Kops attorneys as his court options ran out.
“It’s the end of the road,” said one adviser.
By withholding transition funds and access to government departments, Trump appears to have hoped to leave his successor’s future administration in a kind of suffocating limbo. But through his public actions, and by dictating news coverage while the president remains out of sight, behind the iron fence that surrounds his White House, Biden greatly thwarted Trump’s goal.
His team will now move quickly to secure briefings on key issues, including the pandemic, as infections spiral out of control and efforts begin to accelerate a historic public health effort to vaccinate Americans that could restore a semblance of normalcy on next year.
Murphy’s decision followed a series of further blows to Trump’s effort to steal the election, as the Michigan state canvassing board formally certified Biden’s victory and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivered another withering defeat to the president. Both decisions were made despite vigorous efforts by the White House to pressure state and local officials to validate their effort to invalidate millions of legally cast votes.
Biden’s supporters interpreted Murphy’s move by finally writing a verification letter to trigger the transition – seemingly precipitated by events in Michigan and Pennsylvania – as validation of his decision not to escalate a direct confrontation with Trump or to resort to action. legal.
Bakari Sellers, a CNN commentator and former South Carolina state legislator, said the events of the day demonstrated the seriousness of the incoming administration.
“Joe Biden’s presidency is not designed for Snapchat, it is not designed for Twitter, it is designed to rule,” Sellers said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”
A return to governance
Biden’s series of cabinet elections, unfolding more quickly than initially expected, was an effective way to create the stagecraft of a changing political era, even as Trump sought to thwart such perceptions.
One of the ways in which presidents convey their intentions and values is reflected in their initial elections for their administrations. President-elect Barack Obama brought together a group of rivals, seeking to create a vision of a vigorous intellectual team forging change. With the likes of Rex Tillerson in the State Department and retired General James Mattis, still referred to by his old Marine nickname, “Mad Dog,” at the Department of Defense, Trump’s first nominations came out of the box. central cast, a key consideration for the former reality star who portrays life through television.
Biden’s picks, by contrast, are notable for their lack of flash. Many Americans will not have heard of Blinken, new national security adviser Jake Sullivan, or Biden’s candidate for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines.
But among the people who will be important to a new government, foreign leaders, diplomats, intelligence officials and agents of the power of Congress, the members of that trio are well known and respected after years of building their experience, especially in the administration of Obama
By nominating Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an African American, as UN Ambassador; Alejandro Mayorkas, a Latin American, to head the Department of Homeland Security, and the first female leaders of the Treasury and intelligence community, Biden is making good on his promise to frame a cabinet that resembles the United States.
By turning to Blinken and Sullivan, long a rising Democratic star, to direct foreign policy, Biden is making a statement that Trump’s “America First” approach is headed for the trash and will follow a pragmatic approach based on in restoring US global leadership and multiplying the power of the country through a renewed system of alliances.
America’s allies who have grown used to being berated by the president will be relieved at the promise of some strategic stability.
Meanwhile, Yellen’s long-awaited selection won some praise from her party’s powerful progressive wing, an important consideration in her bid to keep the Democrats together. Former presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted that the nomination would be “outstanding.”
Yellen is’ smart, tough and principled. As one of the most successful Federal Reserve chairs in history, she has stood up to Wall Street banks, ”Warren tweeted.
Biden also chose his longtime Senate friend and former Democratic presidential hopeful and Secretary of State John Kerry, Washington’s only great beast on the new national security team, to serve as environmental czar.
The move indicated a strong correction that moves away from the current president’s disdain for the science behind global warming. Kerry was a key architect of the Paris climate accord, which Biden promised the United States will join again.
Trump to reveal pardons … from Thanksgiving turkeys
The president-elect is expected to formally unveil his cabinet picks and senior officials alongside Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday, a day that will once again witness the often cruel hemorrhage of power from a defeated president.
While his successor is restoring America’s global stance, Trump will fulfill one of his waning obligations before leaving office: pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys.
Even before the transition became official and Trump was hit by new legal reversals, it was already clear that his effort to contest the election was losing steam.
A growing list of Republican lawmakers and outside advisers had made it clear that their crusade was futile. Retired Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee joined that gang Monday, as did Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a senior adviser to the Senate Republican leadership.
Capito called for a transition to begin and warned that the president’s legal options were shrinking.
“I will respect the certified results and congratulate the new leaders of our nation, regardless of the political differences I may have with them,” he said in a statement summarizing the political shifting sands that envelop Trump.
