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Donald Trump can already hear the end. In front of the White House, workers have begun assembling the stands for the swearing-in parade of their designated successor, Joe Biden. The “hammering and sawing,” reports NBC correspondent Kelly O’Donnell, cannot be ignored even in the Oval Office.
Preparations have long been underway at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. In front of the western front of the United States Capitol is the first wooden scaffold for the platform on which Biden will be sworn in. “We’re moving forward,” Republican Senator Roy Blunt, who heads the Congressional committee responsible for the celebration, told ABC News, stressing that “it doesn’t matter which one of them takes the oath.”
Because the president of the United States continues to refuse to accept the almost inevitable reality and the electoral result, in fact still unofficial. Instead, despite centuries of tradition, Trump is doing everything he can to make it difficult to hand over to Biden. Block, sabotage, deny, lie and pretend to have it is won the elections.
The appointment calendar does not lie. Some of the results in the states are yet to be fully counted, but Biden’s overall victory shouldn’t change. The results will be official on December 14, when the members of the electoral college meet. Then all the counts must be done, the counts in the individual states, which Trump relies on to, perhaps, nullify the result after all. This will be formally announced by Congress on January 6, and Biden will be sworn in on January 20 at 12 noon.
Trump can no longer avoid all this. But until then he still has plenty of time and opportunities to not only spoil Biden’s start and leave as much scorched earth as possible, but also to cause dangerous political damage.
America’s lengthy transition agreement gives Trump a surprising amount of freedom. Whether it’s ego, pride or malice: “You can do just about anything you want,” said political scientist Lindsay Cohn of the “Vox” website. “He is still president and has all the regular powers of the office.”
This latest chapter also turns Trump into a drama at the center of which he is alone. Are you going in peace? What does he do beforehand? Questions Americans last had to ask themselves in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln took over a broken government from his predecessor James Buchanan, and a civil war that began five weeks later.
“Stay tuned,” tweeted Trump’s niece, Mary Trump. “This is an attempted coup.”
“Transitions“Moving from one president to another is a complex affair in itself. Thousands of new government officials take over a tangled machine, from petty bureaucratic bureaucratic to nuclear weapons administration. Usually always civilian, George W. Bush even left his successor Barack Obama a handwritten letter: “Now a fantastic chapter in his life has begun.”
But while Biden is already on the phone with foreign heads of state and announces a crown plan, Trump hangs out. The atmosphere in the White House is seemingly miserable: Trump hid in anger and defiance in front of the television, his advisers were demoralized and already looking for new jobs. Some have lit scented candles to calm minds and to dispel the stench of the fast food Trump has delivered.
Meanwhile, Trump is doing his best behind the scenes:
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The General Services Administration (GSA) responsible for the “transition“The law enforcement authority, Biden, denied cooperation and money. They generally authorize the government apparatus to work with the successor’s team the day after the election, provide office space and computers, and release millions of dollars in Tax money for the handover. According to information from “Politico” it should happen Friday at the earliest, if not later. Democrats are temporarily mobilizing private bridging funds. So far Trump has denied the winner of the election access to the internal intelligence briefings, which is otherwise the norm for a handover.
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Trump has yet to call Biden, as is post-election custom, to admit defeat and congratulate him. That shouldn’t happen either. According to US media reports, it is also questionable whether Trump will participate in Biden’s swearing-in ceremony. It is also uncertain whether he is following the tradition of inviting Biden on an inaugural visit to the Oval Office, as Barack Obama received Trump in November 2016. The “New York Times” notes that Biden no longer needs a tour of the White House. ; after all, he was vice president for eight years.
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Almost every hour, Trump showered his supporters with misleading tweets, emails and text messages questioning Biden’s legitimacy and spreading wild conspiracy theories: “The left WILL STEAL the election!” He said in an email Monday. These calls for resistance are combined with requests for donations for an “electoral defense fund” to finance the recounts. In fine print, however, it says that 60 percent of this money would be used to pay off Trump’s campaign debts.
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With the help of Attorney General William Barr, Trump wants to challenge the count in several swing states, especially Pennsylvania. Most lawsuits, however, have no prospect of success, and even if they did, they would never write enough votes again. One of those trials in Arizona only got a maximum of 180 votes. “This is not a legal strategy,” Republican attorney Matthew Sanderson said on MSNBC television. “These are attorneys who act as grief counselors to the president.” In truth, these demands should only serve to offer Trump a smooth “way out” of defeat, the AP agency reported, citing government circles. This also indicates that more and more lawyers are distancing themselves from these types of lawsuits.
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Meanwhile, Trump is pretending as usual. On Monday, he fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in a tweet. Although Esper’s departure was not a shock in and of itself, he had openly opposed Trump’s worst impulses. But a cabinet change in the short term “disabled“The pre-government phase is rare and potentially destabilizing. Adam Smith, Democratic chairman of the House Forces Committee, immediately warned that it would exacerbate America’s” unique threats. “The General Staff intervened. CNN information promptly called for an emergency meeting to show allies that the US military was “maintaining its stability.” Trump had previously fired the heads of three nuclear weapons agencies. More high-profile layoffs are expected, including those of CIA chief Gina Haspel and FBI chief Christopher Wray, making the handover even more difficult.
What is Trump aiming at with his stubbornness?
All of this is not only grotesque, but highly explosive. “Denial of election results is a nightmare scenario,” writes Professor Rebecca Friedman Lissner in “Atlantic” magazine.
What is Trump aiming at with his stubbornness? His words and actions, sanctioned by the majority of Republicans on top of that, suggest that he really does not want to stay in office. So what?
“The real end is not to change the election results,” warns The Nation magazine, “but to give Biden a cup of poison.” The fictitious voter fraud allegations, believed by millions of Americans, were intended to spoil Biden’s victory and brand him as an illegitimate president, while Trump then, with his militantly angry base, the Resistance could be formed. According to a poll, 70 percent of Republicans no longer believe that the elections were fair and free.
Additionally, Trump could put other obstacles in the way of his successor. Already there are rumors of new sanctions against Iran, which would make a planned return to the nuclear deal more difficult for Biden. Trump could also issue decrees that slow down Biden’s initial initiatives and pardon friends threatened by the investigation. Apparently Trump is even playing with his own forgiveness: He is said to have already said that he would only be ready for a “peaceful surrender” under “certain conditions.”
However, the end of January 20, 2021, is scheduled for midday. If then Trump wants to flee quickly to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida at the expense of the state, he has to hurry: his right to the government helicopter “Marine One”, with which he has always landed on a specially built airstrip there since 2017, then also ends.
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