GSA recognises Biden’s win, allowing presidential transition to go ahead, as Trump says he will leave White House if electoral college votes for Biden
Continue reading...Category Archives: Donald Trump
‘He understands Washington’: Joe Scarborough finds echoes of Truman in Biden
The Morning Joe host, author of a new book on Harry S Truman, sees parallels in the two presidents’ efforts to rebuild
Joe Scarborough had been discussing Joe Biden’s cabinet, Donald Trump’s delusions and America’s battered claim to be the indispensable nation when the conversation took an unexpected turn.
“I knew yesterday morning it was Mika’s and my anniversary and she said nothing and about five o’clock in the afternoon I walked in and I said, ‘Is today a special day for you?’” Scarborough shared with his TV guests last Wednesday. “She goes, ‘Yeah, I guess, whatever.’”
Continue reading...Pennsylvania supreme court throws out Republican bid to reject 2.5m mail-in votes
Judge says plaintiff ‘failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted’
Pennsylvania’s highest court has thrown out a lower court’s order that was preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests from the 3 November election.
In the latest Republican lawsuit attempting to thwart president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state, the state supreme court unanimously threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the law allowed for challenges to Pennsylvania’s year-old mail-in voting law.
Continue reading...Trump supporter who gave $2.5m to fight election fraud wants money back
Businessman Fredric Eshelman sues pro-Trump ‘election ethics’ group citing ‘disappointing results’ of effort to expose cheating
A Donald Trump supporter who donated $2.5m to help expose and prosecute claims of fraud in the presidential election wants his money back after what he says are “disappointing results”.
Fredric Eshelman, a businessman from North Carolina, said he gave the money to True the Vote, a pro-Trump “election ethics” group in Texas that promised to file lawsuits in seven swing states as part of its push to “investigate, litigate, and expose suspected illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election”.
Continue reading...Joe Biden gains votes in Wisconsin county after Trump-ordered recount
Milwaukee recount, which cost Trump campaign $3m, boosts Democratic president-elect days before state must certify result
A recount in Wisconsin’s largest county demanded by President Donald Trump’s election campaign ended on Friday with the president-elect, Joe Biden, gaining votes.
After the recount in Milwaukee county, Biden made a net gain of 132 votes, out of nearly 460,000 cast. Overall, the Democrat gained 257 votes to Trump’s 125.
Continue reading...Trump’s baseless claims of Georgia voter fraud spark fears among Republicans
As Trump suffers another post-election court defeat, some Republicans worry he could depress turnout in crucial Georgia runoffs
Despite giving his strongest hints yet that he is coming to accept his loss of the White House to challenger Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s continuing reluctance to leave office and baseless claims about electoral fraud are increasingly worrying his own party.
In particular, Republicans are concerned that the chaos caused by Trump’s stance and his false comments on the conduct of the election in the key swing state of Georgia, which Biden won for the Democrats, could hinder his party’s efforts to retain control of the Senate.
Continue reading...Iranian scientist’s death only the latest in long line of attacks blamed on Israel
The Middle East is on edge as the Trump administration enters its final weeks
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh may be the most senior Iranian nuclear scientist to have been assassinated but he is certainly not the first, joining at least four others during the past decade.
In killings Iran said were aimed at sabotaging its nuclear energy ambitions – it does not acknowledge using the technology for weapons – the country has consistently pointed the finger at Israel, its regional arch-foe.
Continue reading...Trump’s furniture fail: that’s not a desk, Donald – it’s a table for TV dinners
The Resolute desk at the White House is made of timbers taken from a Royal Navy ship. It projects pure power. Is that why the defeated US president has switched to an occasional table?
Has Donald Trump conceded the presidency by design? Is his choice of furniture betraying a subconscious admission of defeat? When the outgoing US president gave a speech this week saying he would depart if the electoral college voted for Joe Biden, his words came as less of a shock than the desk he chose to sit at. It was tiny. It sent out a clear signal. And that signal was “loser”.
Jokes about the shrunken size of Trump’s desk – one photograph, taken from low down, captures his legs barely fitting beneath it – are easy. So let’s not. You want to see a real ruler’s desk? The Resolute desk in the Oval Office is the definition of one: a massive fortress of a working space, like an aircraft carrier with legs, sporting the US eagle at the heart of its heavy Victorian carvings. Its timbers are British in origin: they come from a Royal Navy sailing ship, HMS Resolute, that once braved the icy waters of the north pole. And in a final addition of defensive machismo, Franklin D Roosevelt had the front bulwarked so no one could see his leg braces and discover he was disabled.
Continue reading...How Trump is destroying the presidential transition process
What does Joe Biden lose from the president’s refusal to acknowledge defeat? Crucial time needed to fill positions and prevent serious national security risks
Having lost the election, as well as dozens of post-election challenges, Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to admit defeat is still doing damage Joe Biden’s transition to power.
The formal process has finally begun, but it is weeks late and spent a long time starved of funds as Republican officials stonewalled usual procedures.
Continue reading...Donald Trump says he will leave White House if electoral college votes for Joe Biden
President’s comments are the closest he has come to admitting defeat in election and set stage for college vote on 14 December
Donald Trump has said that he will leave the White House when the electoral college votes for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden in the closest the outgoing president has come to conceding defeat.
Biden won the presidential election with 306 electoral college votes – many more than the 270 required – to Trump’s 232. Biden also leads Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote tally.
Continue reading...Speculation mounts over who Trump might pardon after Flynn
Rick Gates, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign chair, says president ‘knows how much those of us who worked for him have suffered’
Amid widespread outcry over Donald Trump’s pardon of Michael Flynn, speculation surged about who might be next for clemency from the defeated president.
Rick Gates, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign chair, told the New York Times the president “knows how much those of us who worked for him have suffered, and I hope he takes that into consideration if and when he grants any pardons”.
Continue reading...Biden wants to extend an olive branch to Republicans. He shouldn’t | Joshua Craze and Ainsley LeSure
Biden must choose whether to build a post-white America – or to placate the white supremacist project of the Republican party
Shortly after Biden was declared president-elect, he announced that he would reach a hand across the aisle. “We must stop,” he said, “treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies. We are Americans.” This is the Biden playbook at work, honed through years of compromises made with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell: appealing to the Republican elite in office, while trying to appeal to moderate Republicans on the ground.
Having stretched out its hand to the Republicans, the center of the Democratic party then turned to its real enemy – the left that it blames for its poor showing in the election. Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger led the charge, contending that “no one should ever say ‘defund the police’ ever again”. Despite the fact that progressive candidates did well across the ticket, and Biden ran a campaign modelled on Hilary Clinton’s neoliberal program, centrist Democrats blamed the core demand of the Black Lives Matter movement for alienating moderates. In centrist Democrats’ telling, the problem is the left – and the answer is to reach out to that poor soul, the moderate Republican.
Continue reading...US Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths rise amid Thanksgiving rush
US reported 181,490 new cases on Wednesday as millions defied official advice to travel and gather for Thanksgiving
The US reported 181,490 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, a third daily rise in a row, as hospitalisations hit a record for a 16th day in succession, at 89,959.
Related: Supreme court bars Covid attendance limits at New York houses of worship
Continue reading...After Flynn pardon, could Trump do the same for himself?
Analysis: renewed US speculation raises number of legal and practical questions
Donald Trump’s pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn has ignited speculation that he may be planning a broader swath of pardons in his last weeks in office, especially given – most controversially – his own previously expressed view that it is within his own power to pardon himself.
Trump’s pardon of Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI, follows his commutation of the jail sentence of his ally and self-professed political dirty trickster, Roger Stone.
Continue reading...Republicans are right: democracy is rigged. But they are the beneficiaries | Stephen Holmes
Conservatives relish the irony of Trump’s audacious reversal of the truth around rigging – because it distracts attention from their minority rule
The Republican establishment, despite being unfairly advantaged by the skewed composition of the electoral college, by over-representation in the House due to partisan gerrymandering and in the Senate due to equal State suffrage, has been in no hurry to reject Donald Trump’s ludicrous allegation that the American electoral system is rigged to favor Democrats. Sweating the make-or-break Georgia runoffs, the party’s leaders are apparently frightened to cross the mad king, who owns their voters, lest he cause their ratings to plummet as he is doing with Fox News. But Republican complicity with this unprecedented attack on American democracy is not a matter of short-term expediency or fear of reprisals. It is much worse than that. Mitch McConnell and the others are not merely humoring the president until his mania subsides. Trump’s voters are the Republicans’ voters and the Republican party cannot easily cut them, and their deranged conspiracy theories, loose even after 20 January.
Related: How do we avoid future authoritarians? Winning back the working class is key | Bernie Sanders
Continue reading...Biden says ‘America is back’ at the head of the table – but is that a good thing?
After four years of Trump, many diplomats are hopeful – but US critics say the idea of a return to a ‘golden age’ is a delusion
For most of the world’s diplomats, Joe Biden’s foreign policy slogan “America is Back” is no metaphor.
On global issues from climate change, to non-proliferation and human rights, the US under the Trump administration had literally gathered up its papers and pens and left the meeting room. Biden’s election victory and choice of committed internationalists to lead the foreign policy team, means that there will actually be someone sitting in what has been an empty chair.
Continue reading...Obama: Republican portrayal of white men as ‘victims’ helped Trump win votes – video
Barack Obama has said part of the reason more than 73 million Americans voted to re-elect Donald Trump in the election was because of messaging from Republicans that the country was under attack – particularly white men.
In an interview with the radio show the Breakfast Club on Wednesday to promote his new memoir A Promised Land, Obama said Trump’s administration, which he did not name directly, 'objectively has failed, miserably, in handling just basic looking after the American people and keeping them safe', and yet he still secured millions of votes
Continue reading...President pranked as comedians snap up Trump 2024 domain
- Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler buy DonaldJTrump2024.com
- Trump yet to formally concede despite losing to Joe Biden
Donald Trump’s bid to retake the presidency in 2024 has been launched – by two comedians.
“We got the domain DonaldJTrump2024.com,” comics Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, AKA The Good Liars, wrote on Twitter.
Continue reading...Putting Trump behind us is like exiting an abusive relationship: it takes time
Under Trump many had a ‘collective hypervigilance and anxiety of what he might do next’, experts say – so how do we unpack these past four years?
For millions of Americans and nervous election viewers around the world, the month of November has been a seesaw of emotions. Tentatively able to envision a life outside the Trump shadow, many could finally name the mental, emotional and physical toll the past four years have had on them, reflecting on the feelings of depression, insomnia, restlessness and anxiety that, for them, have defined the president’s term in office for so many.
Emboldened by the promise that in a few short months they would no longer have to live in fear of a national security-threatening tweet or Fox News-induced meltdown, millions of people are beginning to process their feelings.
Continue reading...Iranian president upbeat about relations with Biden-led US
Hassan Rouhani tells Tehran cabinet he hopes US will ‘condemn Trump policies against Iran’ and lift sanctions
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said on Wednesday it would be easy to solve the country’s problems with the US so long as Joe Biden stuck to the commitments he made on the campaign trail.
Rouhani’s optimistic remarks to a weekly cabinet contrasted with a speech the day before by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which sketched out a more difficult path to normalisation and the lifting of sanctions.
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