Even Mitch McConnell has thrown in the towel on the Trump regime (well, as good as that will get) promising an "orderly" transition of power to the new administration in January.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said there will be an "orderly transfer" between administrations Jan. 20, though he did not mention President-elect Joe Biden or President Donald Trump, who is refusing to concede, by name.
McConnell, R-Ky., has not yet publicly recognized Biden's victory, but his comments Tuesday following a Senate Republican luncheon signaled he is prepared for a Biden presidency.
Asked about the General Services Administration's refusal to ascertain Biden's victory, which triggers important components of the transition, McConnell did not push for the Trump administration to begin that process but said "we're going to have an orderly transfer from this administration to the next one."
"What we all say about it is frankly irrelevant," he said, adding, "All of it will happen right on time, and we will swear in the next administration on January 20th."
Earlier, McConnell described the next steps in the electoral process, pointing to the upcoming certification of results in key swing states.
"Once those certifications occur, if they occur based upon litigation being tried in various places, those will be final," he said. "The Electoral College will meet in December. And the inauguration will be on January 20th."
McConnell added that the president and his legal team are within their rights to present "whatever evidence" they may have to contest the results.
Though he is losing by more than 10,000 votes in at least three swing states he would need to flip in order to win the election — an amount far outside the total overturned in any recount for at least 50 years — the president is hoping that long-shot legal challenges will revive his chances. So far, his campaign's legal effort has fallen short in federal court, and ongoing efforts appear unlikely to alter the results, let alone swing a state.
Only a handful of Republican lawmakers have acknowledged Biden's projected victory.
Now, Mitch is in a tough spot here. We all know he only thing he cares about is power, and he can't admit that Joe Biden is president and that Kamala Harris is Vice President because he still has to win at least one more Senate race in Georgia in order to keep from becoming Senate minority leader.
But notice, while he's careful not to mention Biden or Harris at all, he's also not mentioning Trump. That's about as good as you're going to get, and the Senate GOP isn't going to even talk to Biden until after the January 5th Georgia elections.
The Nov. 13-17 opinion poll showed that Trump’s open defiance of Biden’s victory in both the popular vote and Electoral College appears to be affecting the public’s confidence in American democracy, especially among Republicans.
Altogether, 73% of those polled agreed that Biden won the election while 5% thought Trump won. But when asked specifically whether Biden had “rightfully won,” Republicans showed they were suspicious about how Biden’s victory was obtained.
Fifty-two percent of Republicans said that Trump “rightfully won,” while only 29% said that Biden had rightfully won.
Asked why, Republicans were much more concerned than others that state vote counters had tipped the result toward Biden: 68% of Republicans said they were concerned that the election was “rigged,” while only 16% of Democrats and one-third of independents were similarly worried.
Even before winning the 2016 election, Trump kept up a drumbeat of complaints about the process, claiming without evidence that it was unfair to him.
Since Biden amassed enough electoral votes to win the White House on Nov. 7, Trump has ramped up those criticisms, telling his supporters that he is the victim of widespread illegal voting.
Trump has failed to give any proof for his claims and has not been able to back them up in court, however. Republicans announced this week that they were dropping federal election lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The poll showed that more Americans appear to be more suspicious about the U.S. election process than they were four years ago.
Altogether, 55% of adults in the United States said they believed the Nov. 3 presidential election was “legitimate and accurate,” which is down 7 points from a similar poll that ran shortly after the 2016 election. The 28% who said they thought the election was “the result of illegal voting or election rigging” is up 12 points from four years ago.
The poll showed Republicans were much more likely to be suspicious of Trump’s loss this year than Democrats were when Hillary Clinton lost four years ago.
In 2016, 52% of Democrats said Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump was “legitimate and accurate,” even as reports emerged of Russian attempts to influence the outcome. This year, only 26% of Republicans said they thought Trump’s loss was similarly legitimate.
Trump still owns all of them, and they know it. And his antics are pushing his cultists towards the point where they will refuse to recognize the legitimate election of Joe Biden.
The potential for massive, nationwide violence is the highest that it's been in years.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment