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(CNN) – The question is not whether President Donald Trump will leave. It’s the amount of destruction, revenge, and chaos it will leave behind on its way to the exit.
Trump’s refusal to admit defeat in the election, his delusional tweets about states leaning in his favor, and the fact that so far they have failed to grant President-elect Joe Biden access to federal funds and resources to strengthen his administration mean that the United States will face 71 difficult days. Trump may be an outgoing president, but he will hold presidency authority until noon on January 20, and his death grip on the Republican Party was only strengthened by winning 70 million votes last week. So the president has the power
– institutional and political – and, apparently, the motivation to create many inconveniences before returning to civilian life.
Attorney General William Barr, who has shown a willingness to use his power to further the president’s political aspirations, told prosecutors on Monday that they should look into baseless allegations of voting irregularities before states certify results in the coming weeks. . The move will raise concerns about a new attempt by the Trump administration to ignore the will of voters, but like the president’s campaign, Barr’s memo has produced no evidence of fraud. However, it led the chief prosecutor for electoral crimes to step down to protest the policy change.
Trump takes revenge
And Trump waited just two days after Biden was chosen as the winner of the election to start fighting back against those he considers enemies within his administration.
He fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, ostensibly because he showed insufficient loyalty to the president’s political goals. And a senior administration official told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Esper is concerned that Trump will fire CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray. The couple is said to risk putting US national security ahead of the president’s desire to use intelligence to pursue his “deep state” conspiracy theories.
Esper’s dismissal reflected the president’s ability to shake major government agencies in his remaining weeks in office to facilitate the fulfillment of his will and create an upheaval in the government that could hinder Biden’s early days in office.
“Frankly, it can cause a lot of damage by destabilizing all major agencies and firing a whole range of leaders,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday.
Almost impossible
Developments on Monday underscored that while Biden’s margins in states where the election result has yet to be completed make any reversal of results nearly impossible, Republicans are trying to cast a shadow over his triumph by delegitimizing his presidency. in the minds of millions of conservative voters. This could end up being Trump’s most destructive legacy.
Traditionally, and in accordance with the law, an outgoing administration makes federal funding, office space, and other resources available to make it easier to inherit a large entity such as the billionaire government of the United States, on the principle that even political opponents share a desire to preserve the national interest. This process generally begins within hours of showing the winner of an election.
The new administrations quickly dispatch “landing teams” to federal agencies to catch up on operations, consider staffing needs, and receive information on vital schedules. In the military and national security departments, incoming officials learn about ongoing covert activities, closed-door diplomacy, and information on the threats a new president needs to know. The process also allows officials to take a leap in establishing their national security clearances.
A more important transition than usual
The current transition is even more critical given the violent coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crisis.
But so far, Emily Murphy, the head of Trump-appointed General Services Administration, has yet to initiate the process of initiating the transition, known as verification, as the president continues to insist, unfounded, that the Democrats are against him. stealing his second term.
His attitude, unsurprising after his constant prioritization of his personal and political goals, and organizational obstacles indicate that the next few months will be as bitter and chaotic as the previous three and a half years of his presidency.
“I think this will be the most hostile and tumultuous presidential transition in modern history, at least since the transition of 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression.” So said Rebecca Lissner, a non-resident Georgetown University scholar and co-author of the new book “An Open World,” which presents a new roadmap for US foreign policy.
“What we need to fear is what can happen when an outgoing Trump administration actively obstructs the incoming Biden team, either by virtue of incompetence or by virtue of outright sabotage, which becomes a clearer possibility. in light of the president’s refusal to accept the election result, “Lissner said.
Biden’s team escalates the rhetoric
Some national security experts fear that the president may take steps such as ordering all American forces out of Afghanistan or trying to radically change the American footprint in Asia, steps that may be difficult for Biden to reverse.
And if a president who has consistently shown irritation at the limits of his power and has politicized the Justice Department asks forgiveness for his acolytes immersed in criminal proceedings, or even tries to create possible immunity for his family or himself, he will feed massive disputes and recriminations.
So far, Biden’s team has been trying to give the president room to digest his defeat. But with the Trump campaign’s promise of pursuing long-term legal challenges, the delays in initiating the transition will only become more severe as time passes.
Trump’s obstruction stands in stark contrast to recent handover in which presidents have ordered their staff to do their best to accommodate their successors’ teams. Obama administration officials were surprised and grateful for the cooperation of President George W. Bush’s White House during the last economic crisis of 2008-2009. President Barack Obama has tried to offer the same courtesy to the nascent Trump administration, but in many cases incoming officials on a mission to gut the federal government have turned a blind eye.
Let’s do it
On Monday, the president-elect got to work on the most important task his administration will face from day one: stopping the pandemic. He announced the formation of an advisory council that sent a strong message that science and not politics would dictate the fight against the virus.
It was an almost surreal moment, after months of Trump’s misinformation about the virus, when a senior figure who is close to assuming the mantle of presidency pleaded with Americans of all political beliefs to wear face masks.
“It is not a political statement”
“It’s not a political statement,” Biden said.
A plus for Biden is that his staff members have experience in Washington, such as Ron Klain, who served as White House secretary to Vice Presidents Biden and Al Gore, and Jake Sullivan, a former senior national security adviser, who they are ready to fill roles in the White House. Yet despite that experience, Democratic agents have been out for the past four years.
So it was significant to see the Coons make a new urgent note on Monday night that the process needs to proceed properly, as Biden’s team realizes that a disputed transition is a possibility.
“President Trump must accept that he lost the election. Your allies and colleagues here in the Senate must talk about this issue and we must move forward,” Coons said in “The Situation Room”. Those comments will be interpreted as a calculated escalation of the rhetoric from Biden’s camp, as Coons is close to the president-elect and considered a potential candidate for a government post, including the secretary of state.
Biden’s team has realized the transition will be more controversial than initially assumed, reports CNN’s Jeff Zeleny.
The calculation of the Republican Party
Only a minority of Republicans, including Senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have publicly accepted that Biden won the election. Others, as they have done throughout the Trump administration, have handled the situation gently because they hope for a political future.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a Senate speech that the President had every right to make legal complaints in the election despite the fact that Republican officials running the elections in the Key states also say there is no evidence to support for Trump’s claims of massive fraud.
We don’t give lessons. That there are no lessons on how the president should immediately and happily accept the preliminary election results of the same people who have just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election and who have hinted that even this would be illegitimate, if they lost new, “McConnell said in the Senate, referring to the Democrats.
The newly elected Kentucky senator, as always, is plotting several moves forward in his political power game. While the interests of the nation may dictate a smooth transition, McConnell’s Republicans have no incentive to clash with Trump’s fervent supporters. A possible pair of ballots in Georgia looming in January will decide the control of the Senate. And looking forward, Republicans have no choice, as they have a tough list of seats they will have to defend in the 2022 mid-term elections, but rely on Trump’s foundation.
Tiempo to Trump
Yet there is also a sense that Republicans are doing their best to give the president time to come to terms with reality, in what is the last time his ego has dictated the course of government in the past four. years.
As days go by and Trump’s campaign fails to produce convincing evidence and arguments to support the president’s claims of election fraud, the inevitability of Biden’s assumption of power will be established.
Many foreign leaders are already looking beyond Trump. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted a photo of him during a telephone conversation with the president-elect on Monday.
Even inside the White House, where sources told CNN that advisers have been threatened with firing if they seek new employment, the fiction that Trump will be in power in January is beginning to fade. The president now sees “a path to defeat,” an adviser told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Monday evening.
But that doesn’t mean the next couple of months will be easy.
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