Election workers in Georgia's Fulton County count ballots by hand. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)
There are literally hundreds of examples from the nearly four years that have followed of this president stereotyping urban areas and scapegoating their leaders with characterizations contradicted by the ground truth. Trump has governed more like the president of the Red States of America than the United States of America. He has often treated blue states and big cities more like adversaries than constituents.
Suggestions from Trump and his allies that the urban areas which overwhelmingly opposed him in battleground states are dens of corruption have reached a fever pitch over the last two weeks.
When a Republican election official in Philadelphia went on CNN to denounce Trump’s claims of widespread fraud as “completely ridiculous,” the president immediately attacked him on Twitter: “A guy named Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia Commissioner and so-called Republican (RINO), is being used big time by the Fake News Media to explain how honest things were with respect to the Election in Philadelphia. He refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty. We win!”
“I have seen the most fantastical things on social media, making completely ridiculous allegations that have no basis in fact at all,” Schmidt said, responding to Trump’s claims. “One thing I can’t comprehend is how hungry people are to consume lies.” “Trump is trying to cling to power by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Black voters,” writes columnist Eugene Robinson. “In Wisconsin, Trump's campaign has paid for recounts in just two counties, one of which is Milwaukee County. In effect, Trump is arguing that Black people have no right to vote him out of office.”
Trump denigrated Baltimore last summer as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess”
Trump called Chicago an “embarrassment” to America and claimed that “Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison.”
He claimed Los Angeles and San Francisco had squandered their “prestige” by not expelling homeless people. “What they are doing to our beautiful California is a disgrace to our country,” he said last summer.
Trump has often claimed that the most dangerous cities in America are all run by Democrats. They are not.
In September, Trump issued an order aimed at defunding police departments in large Democratic-led cities – specifically naming New York, the District, Seattle and Portland, Ore. – even as he falsely accused Biden of wanting to defund the police. “Anarchy has recently beset some of our states and cities,” Trump wrote. “My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones.”
The president is "orchestrating a far-reaching pressure campaign to persuade Republican officials in Michigan, Georgia and elsewhere to overturn the will of voters in what critics decried Thursday as an unprecedented subversion of democracy,” Philip Rucker, Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey report. “After courts rejected the Trump campaign’s baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, the president is now trying to remain in power with a wholesale assault on the integrity of the vote by spreading misinformation and trying to persuade loyal Republicans to manipulate the electoral system on his behalf. In an extraordinary news conference Thursday at the Republican National Committee headquarters, Trump’s attorneys claimed without evidence.
“The latest evolution in the Trump strategy came into view Thursday at RNC headquarters, where Giuliani and campaign attorneys Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell presented their argument for widespread fraud but provided no evidence. Powell argued that the voting systems used in many states, including those manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, use software ‘created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez to make sure he never lost an election.’ … There is no evidence to support this theory. … The company’s products are certified for use in states that Trump won, including Utah and Florida. In addition, Giuliani and Powell’s claims have been disproved in Georgia, where the state’s hand recount of nearly 5 million paper ballots affirmed that the Dominion scanners accurately counted the vote. … Trump was said to be enthused about the news conference and asked allies to watch it, a White House official said. The event seemed at times farcical, with streaks of what appeared to be black hair dye mixed with sweat dripping down the sides of Giuliani’s face as he spoke.”
Giuliani’s post-election meltdown is starting to become literal. “About 100 journalists and hangers-on had crammed into this potential coronavirus incubator for a news conference on the perverse legal strategy of Trump’s failed reelection campaign, which Giuliani is trying to hustle toward a twist ending,” Dan Zak and Dawsey report. The black liquid running down his face “might have been perspiration liquefying his hair dye, or sluicing the black polymer off his eyeglasses. One Manhattan stylist told the New York Times that it might’ve been running mascara; perhaps Giuliani had applied it to touch up the color of his sideburns. One Trump campaign adviser texted a Washington Post journalist as the black streaks inched toward Rudy’s jowls: ‘Is he deteriorating in real time?’ If Rudy is deteriorating, then so is anyone who listens to him. For 90 minutes, an unmasked Rudy and four maskless colleagues … spun a confusing web of conspiracies that indicate Trump won the election that he lost. A revolution, they said, was at hand. ‘It is the 1775 of our generation,’ declared [Powell] … She continued: ‘Globalists, dictators, corporations, you name it — everybody’s against us except President Trump.’”
- “Trump told an ally that he knows he lost, but that he is delaying the transition process and is aggressively trying to sow doubt about the election results in order to get back at Democrats for questioning the legitimacy of his own election in 2016, especially with the Russia investigation,” CNN reports.
The goal of Trump’s team is not to make a coherent argument; they have lost 31 lawsuits so far, and have racked up only 2 quite minor wins that do not affect the outcome. They are simply creating a narrative to muddy the waters, apparently either to get legislatures to replace Democratic electors with Republican ones, or to delay the certification of ballots to throw the election into the House of Representatives, where they think Trump has a chance of winning. They are making no pretense that Trump is the choice of a majority of voters-- Biden is ahead by almost 6 million votes. Rather, they are trying to game the Electoral College.
This is a long shot that gets longer every day.
The threat of criminal prosecution may be one reason Trump refuses to relinquish the presidency.
“Two separate New York State fraud investigations into Trump and his businesses, one criminal and one civil, have expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump,” the Times reports. “The inquiries — a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and a civil one by the state attorney general, Letitia James — are being conducted independently. But both offices issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization in recent weeks for records related to the fees." Ivanka Trump tweeted that both investigations into her dubious "consulting fees” are “100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage.”
In related news: Governments around the world are losing $427 billion each year to tax avoidance and evasion as companies and wealthy individuals shift their money to tax havens, according to a comprehensive new report from the Tax Justice Network, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and a trade-union group called Public Services International. (Jeanne Whalen)
The coronavirus
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The CDC recommends against traveling or gathering for Thanksgiving.
“In the agency’s first news briefing in months, officials said they were alarmed to see 1 million new cases reported across the United States within the past week. As the nation’s death toll since the start of the pandemic reached 250,000, officials spoke of the risks in stark terms, warning that as friends and relatives get together over the holidays, they could inadvertently bring the coronavirus with them,” Brittany Shammas reports. “For those still planning to travel, the guidelines offer tips specific to overnight stays. … Hosts should improve ventilation by opening windows or doors or putting central air and heating on continuous circulation. People should spend time together outdoors, taking a walk or sitting six feet apart for interpersonal interaction. Singing and shouting should be avoided, especially inside. Pets should be treated like human family members and kept from interacting with people outside the household.”
The seven-day average of new cases hovers at more than 160,000, according to Washington Post tracking. On Wednesday, nearly 1,900 deaths were reported, marking the deadliest day since mid-September. Biden said Trump will be remembered by history as one of the nation's most reckless leaders for delaying cooperation on the pandemic after losing reelection, and the president-elect added that an untold number of Americans are going to die as a direct consequence. Meanwhile, Vice President Pence touted encouraging news on the efficacy of vaccines and promised millions of doses could be distributed almost immediately upon approval by the FDA. “They urged the country to continue mitigation measures such as wearing masks and social distancing — even as Pence did not wear a face covering at the White House podium,” Anne Gearan and Seung Min Kim report.
The number of new unemployment claims spiked last week to 742,000, an increase of 31,000 from the previous week. An additional 320,000 claims were processed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program for gig and self-employed workers. “About 20.3 million people are still claiming some form of unemployment insurance,” Eli Rosenberg reports. “The number of new claims has fallen from peaks in the spring but remains historically high. Claims have remained above the pre-pandemic record of 695,000, from 1982, for 35 weeks. … There are other warning signs for the economy. Credit card spending is on the decline. Reservations at restaurants, as measured by OpenTable data, have trended down in year-over-year comparisons in recent weeks. …
“An estimated 12 million people could lose unemployment payments on Dec. 26, potentially pushing many over the brink, if Congress is unable to pass a new stimulus bill before then. Economists worry about the catastrophic effects of this expiration: households with little in the way of support or savings finding themselves in increasingly dire financial straits as the national eviction moratorium expires. Meanwhile, a contraction in household spending could threaten the economy at large. Analyst Andrew Stettner estimates that 4.4 million people have already been pushed off the unemployment rolls.”