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(CNN) – Not even Donald Trump, the great reverser of truth, could keep reality at bay forever.
After nearly three weeks of ridiculous lawsuits and corrosive attacks on democracy, a cascade of momentous events on Monday erased the president’s fantasy of a second term.
In the most significant and symbolic sign that it’s over for Trump, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy, paying attention to the inevitability of constitutional processes, has finally turned on the administrative machine that will formally transfer power to President-elect Joe Biden.
The legal transition will unlock millions of dollars in funding and force the administration to grant access and briefings to the incoming president-elect’s team. More importantly, it will allow Biden representatives to meet with government health officials to learn how to step up efforts to tackle the nationwide Covid-19 disaster.
Yet even before Murphy’s belated ploy, Biden had engineered a tangible implied power shift from the current administration to the next, revealing a series of high-profile appointments to the government. In the process, he transformed his White House from a theoretical proposition to a tangible vision of the policies and leadership style that will set the course for the United States starting January 20 next year.
Biden’s decisions, including former assistant Antony Blinken as secretary of state, signaled that the president-elect is planning an era of serious, unassuming government after years of Trump’s dictation by tweets and a cabinet consisting of designated individuals where he could. trusts to be honored.
Biden also plans to elect former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary, according to two sources familiar with his plans.
Trump has offered his clearest indication so far that he understands his presidency is ending when he tweeted that he told his team to do what’s necessary “about the initial protocols.” However, given his past behavior, repeated denials of his defeat, and attempts to damage Biden’s legitimacy, there will be serious doubts that Trump will fully cooperate with the transition.
The remaining two months in office, during which he will retain the institutional power of the presidency, leave him plenty of time to try to sabotage the Biden administration.
However, Trump’s outrageous attempt to deprive millions of Americans of civil rights is doomed to fail because election officials and state courts have largely done their homework and rejected his baseless claims of fraud. During the president’s most dangerous attack on the institutions of the American political system, the center resisted.
‘It’s the end of the road’
Biden, as he did in the Democratic primaries and general election campaigns, continues to advance relentlessly, creating his own sense of inevitability, ignoring the president’s whims. He took advantage of the fact that power always flows in an ambitious new administration that has yet to be tested by unstable compromises or dents left by daily crises.
The president, meanwhile, presiding over an administration exhausted and humiliated by his defeat, has spent the last few days watching more and more Republicans walk away in dismay at his savage legal challenges. CNN’s Jim Acosta reported Monday that Trump had become frustrated with Rudy Giuliani and his Keystone Kops attorneys as his options in court dwindled.
“It’s the end of the road,” said one councilor.
By withholding transition funds and access to government departments, Trump appears to have hoped to leave his successor’s future administration in some kind of suffocating limbo. But through his public actions, and by dictating news coverage while the president remains out of sight, behind the iron fence surrounding his White House, Biden has greatly thwarted Trump’s goal.
His team will now move swiftly to ensure briefings on key topics, including the pandemic, as infections spiral out of control and efforts begin to accelerate a historic public health effort to vaccinate Americans that could restore some semblance of normalcy to the next year.
Murphy’s decision followed a series of further blows to Trump’s effort to steal the election, as the Michigan state selection committee officially certified Biden’s victory and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivered another defeat. fulminating to the president. Both decisions were made despite vigorous efforts by the White House to pressure state and local officials to validate their efforts to invalidate millions of legally cast votes.
Biden’s supporters interpreted Murphy’s move by finally writing a verification letter to trigger the transition – apparently accelerated by events in Michigan and Pennsylvania – as validation of his decision not to step up a direct confrontation with Trump or to take action. legal.
Bakari Sellers, a CNN commentator and former South Carolina state legislator, said the day’s events demonstrated the incoming administration’s seriousness.
“Joe Biden’s presidency isn’t designed for Snapchat, it’s not designed for Twitter, it’s designed to rule,” Sellers told CNN’s The Situation Room.
A return to governance
Biden’s series of cabinet elections, which ran faster than initially anticipated, was an effective way to set the stage for a changing political era, even as Trump sought to counter such perceptions.
One of the ways in which presidents express their intentions and values is reflected in their initial elections for their administrations. President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a group of rivals, seeking to create a vision for a vigorous intellectual team that forges change. With the likes of Rex Tillerson at the State Department and retired General James Mattis, still referred to by his old marine nickname, “Mad Dog,” at the Department of Defense, Trump’s first nominations have fallen out of the box. Central cast, a key consideration for the former reality star who portrays life through television.
Biden’s choices, by contrast, are notable for their lack of flash. Many Americans will not have heard of Blinken, the new National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, or Biden’s candidate for National Intelligence Director Avril Haines.
But among the people who will be important to a new government, foreign leaders, diplomats, intelligence officials and congressional power agents, the members of that trio are well known and respected after years of building their expertise, especially in administration. by Obama
Appointing African American Linda Thomas-Greenfield as United Nations Ambassador; Alejandro Mayorkas, a Latin American, head of the Department of Homeland Security and the first female leader of the Treasury and the intelligence community, Biden fulfills his promise to frame a cabinet that looks like the United States.
Turning to Blinken and Sullivan, long an emerging Democratic star, to direct foreign policy, Biden says Trump’s “America First” approach is directed towards garbage and will follow a pragmatic approach based on restoring global leadership. of the United States and in multiplying the country’s power through a renewed system of alliances.
America’s allies who have grown accustomed to being scolded by the president will be relieved of the promise of some strategic stability.
Meanwhile, Yellen’s long-awaited selection has garnered some praise from his party’s powerful progressive wing, an important consideration in its attempt to hold the Democrats together. Promising former Presidential Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted that the nomination would be “exceptional”.
Yellen is intelligent, tenacious and principled. As one of the most successful Federal Reserve chairs in history, it has stood up to the Wall Street banks, ”Warren tweeted.
Biden has also chosen his longtime friend in the Senate and former aspiring Democratic President and Secretary of State John Kerry, Washington’s only big beast on the new national security team, to serve as environmental czar.
The move indicated a strong correction moving away from the current president’s contempt for the science behind global warming. Kerry was a key architect of the Paris climate agreement, which Biden promised the United States would join again.
Trump to reveal the graces … from the Thanksgiving turkeys
The president-elect is expected to formally unveil his cabinet choices and senior officials alongside Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday, a day that will once again witness the often cruel hemorrhage of power from a defeated president.
While his successor is restoring America’s global position, Trump will fulfill one of his dwindling obligations before he leaves office: to forgive the Thanksgiving turkeys.
Even before the transition became official and Trump was hit with new legal repeals, it was already clear that his efforts to contest the elections were running out of steam.
A growing list of Republican lawmakers and outside advisers had made it clear that their crusade was useless. Retired Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee joined that gang on Monday, as did Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a senior adviser to the Republican Senate leadership.
Capito called for a transition to begin and warned that the president’s legal options were shrinking.
“I will respect the certified results and congratulate the new leaders of our nation, regardless of the political differences I may have with them,” he said in a statement summarizing the quicksand surrounding Trump.
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