A Quarter of a Million

Sixty Four Days: It’s been eleven days since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, he has as many electoral college votes as Trump received in his “landslide” 2016 election, his lead in the popular vote is in excess of 5.6 million votes and growing, his lead in Pennsylvania is now above 72 thousand and all indications are that his lead in Georgia will remain close to 14 thousand, more than sufficient, even after adding in some uncounted ballots from red leaning Floyd County, but none of that matters to Trump, he’s still not conceding and continues to insist that the election was rigged.  A few Republican Governors including Arkansas’ Asa Hutchinson and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, who went out of his way to confirm that he voted for Trump, have acknowledged that Biden is the President-elect, a few more Republican Senators admit that Biden probably won and Trump’s own national security advisor Robert O’Brien actually promised a smooth transition to Biden, who “looks” to him to be the winner but that transition isn’t happening yet as @GSAEmily, still hasn’t issued her all-important letter.  Apparently she’s been too busy calling her contacts to let them know that she’ll need a new job come January 20 because transition facilitation or not, she knows who won and that her days at GSA are numbered.  As to Ohio’s DeWine, who has solid approval ratings, Trump is now calling for someone, anyone, to primary him from the right when he comes up for reelection in 2022.because saying that it’s clear that Biden is the victor, even while also saying that Trump has every right to challenge fictitious election fraud is all it takes to trigger an onslaught of Trump tweets which, together with the upcoming Georgia runoffs, explains the reluctance of most of those other lily livered Republicans to go on the record. The Georgia Senate races and or some other deep dirt may explain why South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham who just won his reelection is still so firmly attached to Trump. Graham continues to put the few remaining shreds of his tattered reputation in jeopardy.  Last night the Washington Post reported that he’s been pressuring Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to find ways to toss out Biden ballots for imagined signature irregularities, part of a concerted effort by Trump loyalists to overturn the results of Georgia’s election.  Among other things the Trump team is pushing a conspiracy theory that the Dominion Voting System used by Georgia and a number of other states including Michigan, where Biden’s victory margin stands above 140 thousand, is owned by a leftist company with ties to Venezuela and that it intentionally engineered a way to ignore zillions of Trump votes.  That’s totally false as is Graham’s assertion about the signatures. Remember when Attorney General Barr said that he would be investigating and prosecuting  election fraud?  Well, if he meant it he’d be calling little old Lindsey to learn more about what he’s been up to but who are we kidding, Barr is only interested in accusations of left wing fraud, Republicans asking other Republicans to throw out qualifying ballots not a problem.  That said, Graham, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did some backtracking and shuffling last night saying that Raffensberger, whose family has also received threatening calls from Trump fans upset with him for doing his job legally and ethically, must have misunderstood him; Lindsey doesn’t deny the conversation but says that he was only “asking” Raffensberger to “explain” how the Georgia signature verification system worked.  To paraphrase former Director James Comey, Lordy I wish there were tapes. Also, the Trump legal squad continues to strike out in court, losing lawyers, pulling cases in key places like Pennsylvania, otherwise embarrassing themselves and providing fodder for up and coming performer Sarah Cooper’s newest tik toks.  As of last night Marc Elias who’s been running the Democrat’s election legal squad, has a record is 24 wins, 1 loss and that one loss only resulted in the tossing of a few votes; the odds of Trump making it to “his” Supreme Court for a miracle election save are somewhere between zero and zip, yet his fight goes on even as his lawyers keep resigning.    

State of the Union: Despite all that time that he’s spending golfing, grievance tweeting and ignoring the virus, Trump is still playing president. He’s expected to announce plans to withdraw half of the 4500 remaining troops left in Afghanistan, downsize the forces in Iraq to below 3000 and withdraw all of the 700 training and counter-terrorism soldiers from Somalia.  In principle bringing troops coming home from endless wars is a good thing, however, given the pushback from current and former military officials, many in Congress including Republican Leader McConnell, it’s hard to tell if Trump’s plan makes sense or whether it actually puts the remaining troops in more danger, jeopardizes that  much “hailed” peace plan with the Taliban and will lead to further terrorist activities.  Of even more concern, last night the NY Times reported that Trump recently asked the military to give him a plan for a strike against Iran to punish the country’s leaders for building up their stockpile of nuclear material.  That’s the stockpile that Iran started building up again after Trump pulled the US from the Iran nuclear deal that, like it or not, had resulted in a huge stockpile reduction. The good news is that Secretary of State Pompeo,  VP Pence, Acting Defense Secretary Miller and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Milley all advised against an attack, warning that it could escalate bigly, the bad news is that Trump remains unpredictable and vindictive enough to think that leaving a military mess for Biden to deal with would be worth the risk.  So to recap, Trump is pulling troops out of old wars, considering starting new wars, refusing to authorize the transition and for good measure rushing to auction off and signing of drilling agreements in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge all while ignoring that whole virus thing.  Remember when Oklahoma’s Senator Lankford said that he’d press for Trump to start providing security briefings to Biden by Friday of last week, well forget about it, he’s back in line with Trump saying he didn’t really mean it so Biden instead is set to get a national security briefing today, not from current Defense and Security analysts but from a group of former government officials. As to the virus, Biden, who to date has been going with the no drama Obama approach appears to be coming close to losing his cool.  Yesterday he repeated that Trump’s refusal to concede is embarrassing while warning that Trump’s failure to cooperate is much worse as it will result in more death but that’s not something that Trump seems all that concerned about.

252,000 deaths and rising.