As President Donald Trump continues to contest the results of the 2020 election, a small but influential number of Senate Republicans are starting to suggest it’s time to move on.
Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) on Monday both joined calls for the transition process to begin. While neither are saying Joe Biden is the president-elect just yet, both senators indicated it was time that he receive briefings on national security and the coronavirus pandemic.
In an op-ed published in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Portman, who is up for re-election in 2022, wrote that any disputes over the election results should end by Dec. 8, the final day to certify their election results. He added that “in the meantime, the General Services Administration (GSA) should go ahead and release the funds and provide the infrastructure for an official transition.”
Capito, who just won re-election in West Virginia, said that while Trump has the right to pursue legal challenges, “at some point, the 2020 election must end.” She added that “the window for legal challenges and recounts is rapidly closing” and that the Biden team should receive the necessary briefings “to facilitate a smooth transfer of power in the likely event that they are to take office on January 20.”
Until Monday evening, Emily Murphy, the GSA Administrator, refused to certify Biden as the winner of the election, preventing the president-elect’s transition team from coordinating with federal agencies, receiving briefings or having access to certain funds.
The GOP recognition of Biden's success will be critical to getting his Cabinet confirmed. Much of that work begins now, and committee hearings often start before the president-elect is sworn in so his Cabinet can be confirmed quickly. Biden announced Monday he would nominate Antony Blinken for secretary of state, Alejandro Mayorkas for secretary of homeland security and Avril Haines as director of national intelligence.
Should Republicans keep the Senate in January, Portman will oversee Mayorkas’ nomination as chair of the Homeland Security Committee. Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will hold Blinken’s confirmation hearing and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will handle Haines' hearing. Like Portman, Risch and Rubio have also acknowledged the need for a transition. Capito is likely to chair the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Portman and Capito are not officially in GOP leadership, but both attend weekly Monday night meetings held by McConnell.
While members of his own party are suggesting the transfer of power should begin, Trump is pressuring state officials to reject certification of states Biden won, including Michigan. Last week, the president invited Michigan GOP lawmakers to the White House, though the state-level lawmakers who met with Trump said after the meeting that they received no evidence that would change the outcome of the election. The electoral college vote is scheduled for December 14.
Even though Trump’s legal challenges are getting thrown out in court, the universe of Republicans calling for the transition of power to begin may remain small. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has yet to recognize Biden as the president-elect and most Senate Republicans are following suit. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is the only member of GOP leadership in the House or Senate who has called on Trump to either demonstrate evidence of fraud or move on and “respect the sanctity of our electoral process.”
The majority of Republicans who have said the transition should begin have also recognized Biden as president-elect.
In a statement Sunday evening, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said Trump had the opportunity to pursue his legal challenges, but noted that they have so far fallen short.
“A pressure campaign on state legislators to influence the electoral outcome is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process,” Murkowski said. “It is time to begin the full and formal transition process.”
Over the weekend, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania formally congratulated Biden on winning the election, after a federal District judge in Pennsylvania dismissed Trump’s lawsuit to throw out millions of votes. Toomey was among the first Republicans who, earlier this month, called for the transition process to start and said it was “quite likely” Biden would be the 46th president.
In his statement Saturday, Toomey, who will retire in 2022, praised Trump for policies enacted during his administration and encouraged the president to “accept the outcome” of the election “to ensure that he is remembered for these outstanding accomplishments, and to help unify our country.”
GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, along with Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska have also recognized Biden as the next president and slammed Trump’s pressure campaign to reverse the election results. Romney, who voted to convict Trump earlier this year during the impeachment trial, said last week that “it is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting president.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring this year, has also called on the transition process to begin. In a new statement Monday, Alexander said he hoped that Trump would "put the country first and have a prompt and orderly transition to help the new administration succeed." He added that "when you are in public life, people remember the last thing you do."
Yet the reluctance of most Republican senators to push Trump to concede highlights the firm grip the president holds, and will continue to hold, on his party. Republicans also need Trump’s assistance to help win the two runoff races in Georgia on Jan. 5, which will determine control of the Senate. While the GOP is favored to hang on, Republicans are still counting on the president to turn out his base of voters and potentially campaign in the state.
Journalist Carl Bernstein is reminding us all that he owes Senate Republicans nothing, least of all protection as they cower in public and let President Donald Trump make a mockery of our democracy. Bernstein tweeted Sunday: “I'm not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially in reporting this: 21 Republican Sens–in convos w/ colleagues, staff members, lobbyists, W. House aides–have repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS.”
They represent almost 40% of the 53 Senate Republicans. “With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system,” Bernstein tweeted.
He listed senators:
Rubio's inclusion on the list comes as no surprise. He called Trump "a con artist" about to take over the Republican party in 2016. And much opportunistic flip-flopping aside, the Florida senator has ceased many opportunities since then to criticize the Trump administration. Bernstein, however, told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota it wasn’t just Rubio, that most of those he listed were “happy to see Donald Trump defeated in this election” as long as Senate Republicans remained in control.
“We are witnessing the mad king in the final days of his reign willing to scorch the earth of his country and bring down the whole system,” Bernstein said, “to undermine our whole democracy, strip it of its legitimacy, poison the confidence of our people in our institutions and the constitution for Donald Trump's own petulant, selfish, rabid ends."
"We have a President of the United States for the first time in our history sabotaging this country. That’s where we are."
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist said Republicans know what Trump has done “to undermine confidence in our institution.” They are living through a pandemic, witnessing Trump’s “homicidal negligence” that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans,” he said. “McConnell knows what’s going on,” Bernstein said. “And finally I’m told in the last 24/48 hours, I believe he and some others are attempting to find a way to somehow bring the country off the ledge that we are on because of the mad king and what he is doing.”
RELATED: 'It's over': GOP leaders start to come to grips with reality of Trump's loss
The Georgia runoff is Jan. 5. Click here to request an absentee ballot. Early in-person voting starts Dec. 14. And REGISTER TO VOTE here by Dec. 7.
And give $3 right now to rip the Senate majority from Mitch McConnell’s cold dead hands.
Even by his supporters like me, the president is not usually described as “selfless.” The guy has got an ego and it can be overweening at times. But, as was said decades ago on “The Real McCoys,” “If you can do it, it ain’t braggin’ ”
I think the president knows he’s lost this election even though a lot of his supporters do not. So, why would a guy who is somewhat self-obsessed, as any successful politician is, keep fighting in the courts even though he knows it’s probably a lost cause? Because, more than his ego, he cares about the country. Ok, I’ll wait for some of you to stop laughing.
The president is said to have, during the impeachment trial, replied when someone asked him what he would do if he had to give up the presidency, “Guess I’ll just go back to being a billionaire with a supermodel wife.” True. He never needed the presidency and he doesn’t need this fight now.
He’s not some chuffed up middle class hustler who the establishment has over a barrel, which is what has upset them the most about him. So when it comes down to it, by the process deduction, there is likely one main reason he’s doing this, fighting out those lawsuits around the country, because he cares about America’s future.
Donald Trump understands that if he can make a successful case, legal or political, that this was a stolen election maybe America and the Republican Party will wake up. Maybe Joe Biden will be seen, as we were told Trump was, as a legal yet illegitimate president. Maybe the Republican Party will be proactive in 2022 and legally attack before election day, not only defend after election day.
RELATED: Experts Urged Hillary Clinton To Challenge Election Results In 2016
The president understands that if this result is accepted as legitimate the confidence of Americans in the very foundation of the republic will be shaken to its core. Why should we vote if any vote can be overturned by Democrat corruption and hijinks? Thus, he will fight to prove such corruption existed and that it changed the course of the election.
Will that prove successful in getting the president a second term right now? Unlikely. The timing is off, with states certifying and the Electoral College meeting soon. But, it can set us up for 2022 and beyond.
Measures like voter identification, chain of custody ballot security, and stringent oversight of ballot counting could go a long way to restoring trust in the system and ensuring that the person with the most legitimate votes wins the election and, in the case of a presidential election, wins the electoral college votes of a state. That has not been the case this time and the Democrats got away with stealing an election. Never again.
READ NEXT: DNC Official Suggests Re-Education For Trump Voters – ‘How Do You Deprogram 75 Million People?’
This piece was written by David Kamioner on November 21, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
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The post Trump Selflessly Fights Election Corruption appeared first on The Political Insider.
Donald Trump is seeking to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and install himself as dictator for life. There’s no doubt about that part. The whole idea is outlandish, infuriating, and should be such a remote possibility that it can be dismissed out of hand. Except, after everything that has happened over the last four years, it’s really quite difficult to completely rule out this daylight coup. That’s especially true because Republicans keep lining up for the role of minions in this criminal scheme.
On Saturday, more Republicans picked up their democracy-burying shovels. That includes the chair of the Michigan GOP and Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly, both of whom are taking different routes to the same goal—disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Black voters so that Donald Trump can eek out a “victory.” And just to underscore that the rot goes deep, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has added her support to the effort.
At first glance, the letter from Michigan Republican Chair Laura Cox should be the easiest to simply wave away. Cox has absolutely nothing to do with tallying the votes, certifying the results, or selecting the electors. So on the surface, her demand that the state board of canvassers “adjourn for 14 days” to conduct an audit and address “credible reports of procedural irregularities" that do not exist should be moving directly to the nearest circular file. But it’s this effort where McDaniel has also signed her name, making it clear that this—in addition to wining and dining Republican legislators—is an officially sanctioned part of Trump’s plan to derail the process in a state where he lost by 155,000 votes.
The second effort, with Rep. Kelly as the headliner, is an actual court filing. It claims that the expansion of mail in ballots under a Pennsylvania law called “Act 77” is unconstitutional, and as a remedy, asks that all mail in ballots in the state, with the exception of military ballots, be thrown out. That would be roughly 2.5 million ballots discarded—about 1.6 million of them Democratic ballots. It also amounts to well over a third of all ballots cast in Pennsylvania, which might put Kelly in the running for all-time disenfranchisement king.
When listing members of Congress who are the biggest Trump lackeys, Kelly’s name doesn’t come up often. But considering that Kelly compared the impeachment of Trump to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and way back in 2017 told his constituents that Barack Obama was continuing to run a “shadow government” that was undermining Trump … maybe he should move up in the rankings. He certainly will after this stunt. Joining Kelly in his lawsuit are a collection of failed candidates for state office in Pennsylvania. and a scattering of “regular” voters who just don’t want Black people to vote.
Kelly’s lawsuit doesn’t just suggest that millions of votes be discarded. In case there’s some problem with working out how that would affect the outcome, he has a ready alternative that would prevent the need for anyone to break out a calculator. Instead he asked the judge to “direct that the Pennsylvania General Assembly choose Pennsylvania’s electors.”
While he’s at it, Kelly asks the court to pay for his expenses for trying to throw out the votes of millions of Pennsylvanians. Because why the hell not?
By J Peder Zane for RealClearPolitics
Imagine if Joe Biden had enjoyed a healthy lead on election night only to see it evaporate as the numbers dripped in from Republican strongholds.
Does anyone believe the mainstream media would have rushed to anoint Donald Trump the winner?
Would the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and other outlets have cast the inevitable Democrat demands for ballot reviews and recounts as a constitutional crisis or would they have run wall-to-wall coverage about the inherent problems associated with mail-in ballots?
RELATED: Trump Campaign Files For Recount In Two Democrat-Leaning Wisconsin Counties
We don’t have to imagine the answer – just recall 2016 when the same liberal news organizations that are damning Trump as a tyrant and suggesting he might be planning a coup cheered and facilitated Democrat efforts to delegitimize Trump’s victory by claiming he was a crooked businessman who had colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the election.
After early efforts failed to convince electors to defy the will of their states and cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton, talk turned to impeachment before Trump was even sworn in.
On the morning of his inauguration – which was boycotted by several dozen Democrat members of Congress because, as Rep. Jerrold Nadler said, he was not “legally elected” – a Washington Post article reported, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.”
Democrats and their media allies fulfilled that promise, spending the next three years using salacious smears funded by the Clinton campaign to claim Trump was Putin’s puppet.
RELATED: Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward: Election ‘Will Ultimately Be Decided In Favor Of President Trump’
When Special Counsel Robert Mueller dismissed that conspiracy theory in March 2019, Democrats impeached Trump on other grounds that did not include high crimes or misdemeanors.
At a May 2019 event, Biden agreed with a woman who said Trump was “an illegitimate president.” A month later, former President Jimmy Carter said the same.
Nothing in our history has done more to destroy norms and undercut the rule of law.
This history does not bolster Trump’s claims that massive voter irregularities caused his 2020 defeat – though we owe it to our country to review the results from this highly unusual election.
It does suggest that one reason millions of Americans are skeptical about Biden’s victory is the insistence of a highly partisan media that he won fair and square – no questions asked.
Presidents come and go, but the media is forever. The transformation of leading news outlets from liberal voices into propaganda arms of the left may be the most consequential legacy of the Trump era.
RELATED: Rudy Giuliani, Trump Campaign Level Massive Allegations Against Election Results In Press Conference
It’s not surprising that the media so causally compares Trump to Hitler while branding Republicans as racists – these are now articles of faith among the leftists they support. This is apparently what they believe.
Gallup polls illustrate the partisan shift. During the Obama years about 55% of Democrats felt the “mass media” reported the news “fully, accurately, and fairly.” About 30% of Republicans agreed.
In 2017 the number of approving Democrats rose to 72% – where it has roughly stayed – while the number of approving Republicans dropped to just 14% in 2016 and is now at 10%.
No doubt many Democrats tell themselves they are reality-based while Republicans have been brainwashed by Trump’s “fake news” lies.
RELATED: Poll Shows Over Half of Republicans Believe The Election Was ‘Rigged’ And Trump ‘Rightfully Won’
But that position is hard to defend given the Trump/Russia fiction they perpetrated, the ugly accusations they launched against Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and the contempt with which they view those who disagree with them.
Free nations need an honest press. We no longer have one. Heaven help us.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
The post What If Biden Were Seeking Recounts? We Know Exactly What Would Happen appeared first on The Political Insider.
The list of those close to Trump who have been infected includes White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who tested positive earlier this month.
The White House hit pause earlier this year on a $145 million pot of funds intended for the World Health Organization and other foreign assistance programs in a move that Democrats say mirrors the Trump administration’s decision to “illegally” freeze military aid to Ukraine.
That’s according to documents released on Friday by House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth, House Appropriations Chair Nita Lowey and House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney, which they obtained from the Office of Management and Budget.
The documents show that the agency used an apportionment footnote to hold up the money, requiring the State Department to produce a “written explanation” describing how the cash would be obligated in line with the president’s priorities. That footnote came as President Donald Trump sought to withdraw from WHO and halt funding for the organization.
“The Trump Administration’s rampant abuse of power has jeopardized our communities, subverted our democracy, violated our laws, and now it has undermined global efforts to fight the coronavirus,” Yarmuth, Lowey and Maloney said in a joint statement.
“The documents obtained by our Committees show OMB took legally-binding steps to cater to the President’s dangerous and misguided whims, using an apportionment footnote to freeze expiring funds and circumvent Congress — the same tactic used to illegally withhold aid to Ukraine and which ultimately led to President Trump’s impeachment,” the lawmakers said.
A senior administration official called House Democrats' release "bogus," arguing that the money was ultimately spent and doesn't amount to a violation of federal budget law. "Nothing happening here," the official said.
The Trump administration’s 2019 decision to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine partly prompted House Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry into whether Trump leveraged the aid for investigations into his political rival at the time, now President-elect Joe Biden.
The agency first halted funding intended for WHO in August through an apportionment footnote. All of the money for WHO and other international programs was ultimately released just a week before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. In early September, the Trump administration announced that it would distribute millions of dollars owed to the global health organization to other international causes.
Trump and other Republicans last spring railed against the WHO over its initial response to the coronavirus when it emerged in China. The president claimed the world health body ignored the threat and bowed to pressure from China.
The freeze on funding for WHO and other foreign aid programs is notable, given that the Trump administration was never required to spend the money on the international health organization.
Language included in fiscal 2020 spending bills only notes that the administration spend the money on “necessary expenses, not otherwise provided for, to meet annual obligations of membership in international multilateral organizations.”
“We believe that pursuant to the appropriation, we have broad discretion to spend that money,” an administration official told POLITICO in April.
House Democrats have since sought to tighten that language in their fiscal 2021 spending bills for the State Department and USAID, requiring the funds to be spent specifically on WHO.
In April, Yarmuth, Lowey and Maloney introduced a bill, called the “Congressional Power of the Purse Act,” that would require all apportionment documents to be published online.