Did you miss it? On Tuesday, the electoral college made official what we’ve identified for six weeks: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris for the presidency.
Individuals could possibly be excused for being unaware that electors met in all 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia to forged votes. In almost each presidential election 12 months, the constitutionally required however largely ceremonial occasion passes with little discover. The tragic exception, after all, was in 2020: Loser Trump adopted weeks of lies and scores of lawsuits alleging election fraud with an unlawful scheme creating pretend pro-Trump electors in battleground states — a prelude to the violent revolt on Jan. 6, 2021. (Not like Trump, his accomplices within the scheme are, justly, nonetheless being prosecuted.)
It’s nice that the switch of energy is continuing peacefully, because it all the time has besides on the onset of the Civil Conflict, and, sure, in 2021. But you’ll be able to thank President Biden, Vice President Harris and their fellow Democratic good losers for that, not Trump. Nobody can credibly doubt that, had he misplaced once more, he’d be elevating one other ruckus. Or worse, that there’d be violence. Trump suggested as a lot, telling Time in April, “If we don’t win, , it relies upon.”
States and the federal authorities prepared for mayhem that by no means got here. Gabriel Sterling, the highest Georgia election officer who 4 years in the past publicly and presciently warned Trump that “somebody’s going to get killed” due to his provocations, and who endured demise threats himself, mentioned of the electors’ assembly this week, “To be sincere, I forgot about it.”
As Trump declared in final month’s victory speech, “It’s time to unite.”
However as Biden said afterward in congratulating him: “You may’t love your nation solely if you win.”
Biden — who nonetheless hasn’t acquired Trump’s acknowledgment of Biden’s 2020 victory, not to mention congratulations, and who, due to Trump, is considered illegitimate by seven of 10 Republicans — expressed hope that “we are able to lay to relaxation the query in regards to the integrity of the American electoral system. … It may be trusted, win or lose.”
Certainly. And that’s why, on this week of the uneventful electoral school vote, Individuals ought to take the event to notice the harm that Trump has wrought to the citizenry’s religion in elections by his years of demagogically disparaging them — as a substitute of becoming a member of him and his MAGA minions in memory-holing their falsehoods about election fraud.
Trump has gone silent about “rigged” elections since he received in November. And but, as much as the final hours of voting, he was crying foul. “Lots of speak about large CHEATING in Philadelphia. Legislation Enforcement coming!!!” he posted on election day.
Metropolis and state officers, together with Seth Bluestein, a Republican member of Philadelphia’s board of elections, reposted Trump’s mislead insist there was “completely no fact” to it. For that, Bluestein suffered antisemitic assaults and threats on-line. Numerous election staff have identified the sensation. Thanks, Trump.
Days earlier, Trump claimed, “Pennsylvania is dishonest, and getting caught, at massive scale ranges not often seen earlier than.” He unfold a false conspiracy principle of vote stealing in a single county, including, “We caught them chilly.” No, he hadn’t; there have been no vote thieves to catch.
After Trump received Pennsylvania — shock! — he clammed up about Democrats’ alleged heists there and in all six different battleground states that he carried, together with 4 states ruled by Democrats. I assume as vote riggers go, Democrats are simply inept?
Even earlier than the election, Trump stifled his speak that early and mail voting are rife with fraud, however solely after advisors, apoplectic that Republican candidates have been being shortchanged, appealed to his “yuge” ego: “Sir, your individuals are so excited to vote for you that they need to as quickly as they’ll,” one said throughout an April assembly at Mar-a-Lago. “You gotta inform them it’s OK.”
Trump has not, nevertheless, modified his tune in regards to the 2020 election. The president-elect continues to lie that he received it, so routinely that reporters let it go unchecked. What’s worse, trying forward, is that Trump reportedly is making fealty to his election lies a job requirement for appointees to high-level administration posts.
So it’s that he’s tapped former Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to be U.S. legal professional basic. She was a part of “the first wave of the Big Lie,” as former Trump White Home aide Alyssa Farah Griffin put it to the Home Jan. 6 investigation committee. Bondi rushed to Pennsylvania after the 2020 election to unfold disinformation about useless voters and poll dumps. She was with lead election denier Rudy Giuliani for Crew Trump’s ludicrous information convention at 4 Seasons Complete Landscaping in a Philadelphia industrial park. And he or she was fulminating on Fox Information: “We’re not going wherever till they declare Trump received Pennsylvania.”
In 2022, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the Jan. 6 committee that Bondi contacted her earlier than she testified to press Hutchinson to stay loyal to Trump, based on the Washington Submit. (But it’s former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, that Home Republicans now want prosecuted for witness tampering for her talks with Hutchinson.) This 12 months, Bondi echoed Trump’s falsehoods about noncitizens voting from her platform as a pacesetter of a pro-Trump coverage institute. And he or she promised retribution for Trump’s indictments: “The Division of Justice, the prosecutors shall be prosecuted.”
Little doubt Bondi as the following legal professional basic would perform Trump’s requires the Justice Division to investigate the 2020 election, to prosecute Biden and to get Home Jan. 6 committee members behind bars.
“Is she going to proceed … pushing out the Massive Lie?” California’s new Democratic senator and Jan. 6 committee veteran Adam Schiff not too long ago requested on MSNBC.
That was a rhetorical query, after all.
