November 23, 2020
Although nearly three weeks have passed since Election Day, the malignant narcissist squatter in The White House shows no sign of relinquishing his death grip on presidential power or the national spotlight that accompanies it. In the immediate aftermath of the election being called for Biden, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet, which was followed by the departure of four senior Defense Department officials in charge of policy and intelligence. Trump replaced them with a disgraced conspiracy theorist who had called President Obama a terrorist, and loyalist flunkies like Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who provided sensitive information about the Russia investigation, (Source: “Trump administration removes senior defense officials and installs loyalists, triggering alarm at Pentagon,” by Barbara Starr, Zachary Cohen and Ryan Browne, CNN.com, 11/13/20).
The coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, with cases and deaths growing at a truly alarming rate, pushing our healthcare system to the verge of collapse and increasing suffering for untold numbers of Americans. Yet neither Trump, nor the Republican-led Senate are lifting a pinky to help, preferring to use their time to ram through unqualified federal judges or to mount an unprecedented attack on the bedrock of our democracy, free and fair elections. Trump’s initial salvo was to fire Chris Krebs, the federal official who dared to debunk his dangerous lies about election fraud, (Source: “Trump Fires Christopher Krebs, Official Who Disputed Election Fraud Claims,” by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times, 11/17/20).
These are hardly typical moves of an outgoing administration. As he has done for the last four years, Trump is assaulting our very democracy itself, as he seeks to overturn the will of the people through a series of increasingly outlandish lawsuits waged by a revolving cast of unprincipled attorneys. With wild-eyed Rudy Guiliani and his dime-store dye job leading the pack, Trump has a record in court of 2-34. Just yesterday, Pennsylvania District Judge Matthew Brann dismissed Trump’s effort to disenfranchise 6.8 million Pennsylvania voters. Judge Brann asserted that Trump’s lawyers had resorted to “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations …unsupported by evidence,” (Source: Memorandum Opinion of U.S. D.J. Brann, Trump v. Boockvar, 4:20-CV-02078).
At the same time that Trump’s clown car of counsel was having a head on collision with the Rule of Law, Trump was engaged in a days’ long, disgustingly corrupt scheme to delay certification of the vote in Michigan, aided at first by two blatantly racist Republican members of the Wayne County board of canvassers who were willing to certify the vote counts for every city except overwhelmingly Black Detroit; and then by two Republican state legislators who flew to meet with Trump at The White House and were then seen having cocktails at the Trump Hotel.
At the root of all of Trump’s schemes — the lawsuits in Pennsylvania, attempted bribery in Michigan, endless recounts in Georgia is an attack, not just on democracy, but specifically on the status of Black people as citizens. Trump and his band of co-conspirators have waged a frontal assault on Black people’s Constitutional right to vote, leveling scurrilous accusations of fraud and dishonesty in every city and state where Black people make up a significant percentage of the population. This, combined with Trump’s adamant refusal to begin an orderly transition, is a clear statement by Trump that, in his view, elections won with Black votes are illegitimate per se. We know that Trump will be gone, whether he wants to be or not, by 12:01 on January 20, 2021. Our problem is that 72 million Americans and all but three Republicans in Congress agree with him. It doesn’t mean we can’t fight it, but we had better face it.
#GASenate.com