[ad_1]
Donald Trump could take a major blow to his increasingly desperate effort to overturn the results of the US presidential election on Monday when 538 members of the electoral college will cast their votes and formally send Joe Biden to the White House.
Under the arcane formula that the United States has followed since the first election in 1789, Monday’s electoral college vote will mark the official moment when Biden becomes the 46th president on hold. Voters, including political celebrities like Bill and Hillary Clinton, will gather in state capitals across the country to cement the outcome of this momentous race.
Typically the process is figurative and hardly noticeable. This year, given Trump’s volatile display of leaning against the windmills in an attempt to deny the will of the American people, it will have real political significance.
Trump continued those quixotic efforts over the weekend, sparking political unrest in several cities, including the nation’s capital. Sunday morning tweeted in capital letters that this was the “most corrupt election in American history.”
In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Sunday, he insisted that his undemocratic mission was not over. “We continue and we will continue to advance,” he said, before repeating a series of lies about the manipulation of the elections.
Trump’s outright lies about winning key states, such as Pennsylvania and Georgia, were not questioned by Fox News interviewer Brian Kilmeade.
Any wavering hopes Trump might harbor of clinging to power were shattered on Friday when the US Supreme Court bluntly dismissed a lawsuit led by Texas to block Biden’s victory in four other states. In a different case, a Wisconsin Supreme Court judge condemned Trump’s lawsuit aimed at nullifying the votes of 200,000 Americans, saying it “smelled of racism.”
Despite the outright rejection Trump has suffered in dozens of cases, including before the nation’s highest court, his unprecedented ploy to break democratic norms continues to inflict incalculable damage on the country with potential long-term consequences. The Texas-led push to overturn the election result was backed by 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives, nearly two-thirds of the party conference, as well as Republican state attorneys general from 18 states.
Among the broader electorate, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 77% of Republicans mistakenly believe that there was widespread voter fraud in the November 3 election.
Another manifestation of the damage that is being done was the violence that broke out Saturday night in several cities. In Washington DC, four people were stabbed and required hospital treatment, and 23 were arrested, when far-right groups clashed with counter-protesters after the so-called “Stop the Steal” march. enthusiastically backed by Trump.
Far-right militia groups mingled with Trump supporters and participated in the violence, including the white nationalists Proud Boys who call themselves “Western chauvinists.” Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser whom Trump forgave for lying to the FBI, addressed a crowd and exclaimed: “We decided the election. We are fighting a battle across the United States. “
Violence also broke out in Olympia, the capital of Washington state. One person was shot in clashes between heavily armed factions, with supporters of Trump and the Proud Boys clashing with counter-protesters, and three people were arrested.
Video footage It appeared to show that the shot was fired by a Proud Boy member and that the victim was a counter-protester, although details remained vague.
In Georgia, a separate militia group, Georgia Security Force III%, attended a far-right rally at the capitol on Saturday. The armed group has helped organize recent caravans that have intimidated local election officials in their homes by falsely claiming that Biden’s victory in Georgia was fraudulent.
Biden’s transition team has watched with growing alarm the series of violent incidents that have emerged surrounding Trump’s false claims of a rigged election. Cedric Richmond, a Democratic representative from Louisiana who Biden has appointed as the incoming director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said they were looking forward to what the holiday season awaited them.
“We are concerned about the violence,” he told Face the Nation on CBS News. “Where there is violence it is not protest, that is breaking the law, so we are concerned.”
When asked about the majority of House Republicans who backed Trump’s frivolous demand to block the certification of election results, Richmond hinted that his resistance was more theatrical than real. “They recognize Joe Biden’s victory. This is only a small proportion of the Republican conference that is appeasing the president in his departure because they are afraid of his Twitter account.
The atypical nature of Trump’s stubborn refusal to concede was underlined Sunday by Al Gore in an interview with CNN’s State of the Union. Exactly 20 years ago to this day, he conceded the hard-fought 2000 presidential race to George W Bush, saying, “This is America, we put the country before the party, we will stand behind our new president together.”
Gore told CNN that he hoped Monday’s electoral college vote would be the beginning of the healing. He called the lawsuit dismissed by the Supreme Court “ridiculous and unintelligible,” and criticized Republicans who continued to support Trump in his “lost cause.”
“With the electoral college voting tomorrow in all 50 states, I hope that’s the point where some of those who have held out will drop the ghost,” Gore said. “There are more important things than bowing down to fear of a demagogue.”
[ad_2]
