Donald Trump's outrageous pre-transition decisions are already dangerous: There is nothing "peaceful" in his rhetoric

Donald Trump's sequel will be a bigger failure than his first trial run!

Maine Writer: Thanks to the Houston Chronicle for peeling back the veneer on the fake Trump participation in a smooth administrative transition.  Frankly, Trump was prepared for another January 6th insurrection if Vice-President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz had been elected.  All of which is to say, Donald Trump gets zero credit for supporting a smooth transition. Nevertheless, while the Biden administration delivers toward the peaceful transition, Donald Trump has exposed his incompeence in a series of chaotic decisions about cabinet nominees, creating explosive policies about mass exportations, tariffs, and making outrageous claims about how the United States can create Canada as a 51st state, purchase the Island of Greenland from Denmark and reclaim the Panama Canal.  Preposterous! Echo opinion published at this site here:

Jackie Calmes opinion: It’s great that the transfer of power following the November 2024, election is proceeding peacefully, as it always has except at the onset of the Civil War, and, yes, in 2021. 

Yet, you can thank President Joe Biden, Vice President Harris and their fellow Democratic good losers for that, not Trump. 

No one can credibly doubt that, had he lost again, he’d be raising another ruckus. Or worse, that there’d be violence. Trump suggested as much, telling Time in April, “If we don’t win, you know, it depends.”

States and the federal government prepared for mayhem that never came. Gabriel Sterling, the top Georgia election officer who four years ago publicly and presciently warned Trump that “someone’s going to get killed” because of his provocations, and who endured death threats himself, said of the electors' meeting this week, “To be honest, I forgot about it.”

As Trump declared in last month’s victory speech, “It’s time to unite.”

But as Biden said afterward in congratulating him: “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

Biden — who still hasn’t received acknowledgment of Biden’s 2020, victory, let alone congratulations, and who, thanks to Trump, is considered illegitimate by seven of 10 Republicans — expressed hope that “we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system. … It can be trusted, win or lose.”

Indeed. And that’s why, in this week of the uneventful electoral college vote, (Did you miss it❓ On Tuesday, the electoral college made official what we’ve known for six weeks: Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris for the presidency) - Americans should take the occasion to note the damage that Trump has wrought to the citizenry’s faith in elections by his years of demagogically disparaging them — instead of joining him and his MAGA minions in memory-holing their falsehoods about election fraud.

Trump has gone silent about “rigged” elections since he won in November. And yet, up to the final hours of voting, he was crying foul. “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!” he posted on election day.

City and state officials, including Seth Bluestein, a Republican member of Philadelphia’s board of elections, reposted Trump’s lie to insist there was “absolutely no truth” to it. For that, Bluestein suffered antisemitic attacks and threats online. Countless election workers have known the feeling. Thanks, Trump.

Days earlier, Trump claimed, “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.” He spread a false conspiracy theory of vote stealing in one county, adding, “We caught them cold.” No, he hadn’t; there were no vote thieves to catch.

After Trump won Pennsylvania — surprise! — he clammed up about Democrats' alleged heists there and in all six other battleground states that he carried, including four states governed by Democrats. I guess as vote riggers go, Democrats are just inept?

Even before the election, Trump stifled his talk that early and mail voting are rife with fraud, but only after advisors, apoplectic that Republican candidates were being shortchanged, appealed to his “yuge” ego: “Sir, your people are so excited to vote for you that they want to as soon as they can,” one said during an April meeting at Mar-a-Lago. “You gotta tell them it’s OK.”

Trump has not, however, changed his tune about the 2020, election. The president-elect continues to lie that he won it, so routinely that reporters let it go unchecked ❗😧 What’s worse, looking ahead, is that Trump reportedly is making fealty to his election lies a job requirement for appointees to high-level administration posts.

So it is that he’s tapped former Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to be U.S. attorney general. She was part of “the first wave of the Big Lie,” as former Trump White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin put it to the House Jan. 6 investigation committee. Bondi rushed to Pennsylvania after the 2020 election to spread disinformation about dead voters and ballot dumps. She was with lead election denier Rudy Giuliani for Team Trump’s ludicrous news conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in a Philadelphia industrial park. And she was fulminating on Fox News: “We are not going anywhere until they declare Trump won Pennsylvania.”

In 2022, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6, committee that Bondi contacted her before she testified to press Hutchinson to remain loyal to Trump, according to the Washington Post. (Yet, it’s former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, that House Republicans now want prosecuted for witness tampering for her talks with Hutchinson.) This year, Bondi echoed Trump’s falsehoods about noncitizens voting from her platform as a leader of a pro-Trump policy institute. And she promised retribution for Trump’s indictments: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted.”

No doubt Bondi as the next attorney general would carry out Trump’s calls for the Justice Department to investigate the 2020 election, to prosecute Biden and to get House Jan. 6 committee members behind bars.

“Is she going to continue … pushing out the Big Lie?” California’s new Democratic senator and January 6 committee veteran Adam Schiff recently asked on MSNBC.

That was a rhetorical question, of course.

Jackie Calmes is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Dec 20, 2024

Jackie Calmes:  Trump’s acknowledgment of Biden’s 2020 victory, let alone congratulations, and who, thanks to Trump, is considered illegitimate by seven of 10 Republicans — expressed hope that “we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system. … It can be trusted, win or lose.”

Truth about the 2020 election and Republican propaganda

"Hopefully, at some point, the repetition of truth will crowd out the repetition of the big lie." 

Echo editorial opinion published in the Tennessee Lookout , by Holly McCall.

Almost five months ago, Joe Biden was inaugurated President of the United States, an event that came after months of lawsuits filed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign team, outright lies and a disgraceful and violent insurrection against Congress the very day that body was certifying the results of the federal election.

That was bad enough, but even worse is that almost half a year after Biden was seated, an eighth of a way through his term, is that so many Americans are still buying into the big lie that Trump won.

A poll conducted and released by the Vanderbilt University Poll June 8 showed that 71% of poll respondents who identify as Republican believe that Joe Biden stole the presidential election, while 30% of those identifying as independent voters share the opinion.

To be clear, there is a big difference between opinion and fact.

“This is a remarkable number—that the vast majority of a political party feels the other party is illegitimate, despite the lack of any evidence,” said Josh Clinton, professor of political science at Vanderbilt and co-director of the university’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. “This survey question has not been previously relevant in American politics, so going forward this will continue to be a concern when evaluating how this will impact future elections around the country.”

The poll sampled 1,000 people across Tennessee and it was conducted between May 3-20 with a 3.7% margin of error.

Reuters news service, an unimpeachable news service, provided a succinct fact check on the stolen election rumors in February.

“Courts dismissed more than 50 lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud and irregularities presented by Trump and allies. U.S. election security officials have said the election was ‘the most secure in American history,’” stated the Reuters story.

What in the world has happened to our country and our state that so many people continue to believe such an easily disprovable lie? How did Donald Trump manage to convince so many people, many of whom are reasonable about other issues, that he won an election he clearly did not?

I was recently a guest on a Nashville TV political talk show that typically features two guests from the right or the Republican Party and two progressives. I’ve known one of the Republican men for more than 30 years: We met at a time when we were both active in Democratic politics. Now, I know Southern Democrats are traditionally more conservative than, say, Northeastern Democrats, but I can’t help but wonder why he changed courses. Maybe he saw more opportunity as the Republican Party became the majority party in the state or maybe the Trump movement allowed him to be who he was all along.

But I was still surprised to hear him admit on television that he, too, believes the election was stolen from Trump. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, for I also saw the photos he posted on his social media channels from just outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The other guest, a man who works in state government, agreed that he, too, believed the election was stolen. 

Both men sat there, on camera, with Cheshire cat grins on their faces. Again, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

If our own state lawmakers don’t have the integrity to accept valid election results—and the truth—how can we expect different from their constituents who are look to them for leadership?

“I weep for America,” responded my fellow guest, Justin Kanew, to the two Republicans perpetuating the election lie on air.

I get it. Many of us weep for our country, torn apart by political division and lies. But we must do more than weep. One of the tenets of propaganda is that the repetition of lies makes them seem truthful. Psychologists call this the ‘illusion of truth’ effect. Those of us who care about the truth must just as stringently keep repeating it, no matter how long it takes. Hopefully, at some point, the repetition of truth will crowd out the repetition of the big lie.

It's about decency, stupid!

Supporters of Donald Trump are stupid. I'm sorry to be so blatant, but it's the truth. Columnist Frank Bruni explains this by calling for integrity, in his opinion article, published in the Nevada newspaper the Las Vegas Sun. 

In my opinion, I believe that "integrity still matters"!

Sorry Donald Trump. Listen up! Decency beats dollars - an opinion by Frank Bruni published in the Nevada Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

Bruni wrote:  "For as long as I have been writing about politics, I have had certain rules drilled into me. Three above all.

• Rule No. 1: All other things being equal or "equal-ish", voters will choose the candidate with whom they would rather have a beer. This applies mostly to presidential elections — though gubernatorial, Senate and House races are not exempt — and is thought to explain George W. Bush’s political success, his father’s political limitations and Richard Nixon’s uphill slog and need for trickery. What you wanted to have with Nixon wasn’t a beer. It was hemlock. 
• Rule No. 2: Voters thrill to confidence and optimism. This explains Ronald Reagan. In fact, Reagan's cup wasn’t merely half full. It was effervescent, with jelly beans on the side.
• Rule No. 3: Voters vote their pocketbooks. The party that seems to be the surer route to three days at Six Flags is the party in clover. In 1992, James Carville boiled this down into a political catchphrase so endlessly repeated and boundlessly revered that it will probably be engraved on his tombstone: It’s the economy, stupid.

Except it’s not — at least not always and probably not for the 2018 midterms.

Unemployment is below 4 percent. In the second quarter of the year, the gross domestic product grew 4.2 percent. The stock market under President Donald Trump has been as bullish as Pamplona.

But his approval rating remains stuck below 45 percent. In many recent polls, Democrats enjoyed a double-digit advantage over Republicans when voters were asked the “generic ballot” question of which party they prefer. And over the past month, handicappers have grown increasingly confident that Democrats will flip more than the 24 seats needed to gain control of the House. 

Indeed, the words “blue wave” are being used more often, with less timidity.

Part of that is about a customary swing of the pendulum in midterms. Part suggests that the most frequently cited economic measurements do not reflect how most voters are really faring.

But part explodes the idea that we Americans are irredeemably materialistic creatures, fixated on our possessions. What happens Nov. 6 may demonstrate that we care about more than that. It may bring our better angels into play and best values into relief.

“It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid!” was the headline on a recent column by CNN’s Chris Cillizza. In Roll Call, Stuart Rothenberg, a veteran analyst of congressional races, went with “Why It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid.”

The uppercase letters — theirs, not mine — capture the gusto of their assertions that the midterms may hinge on such issues as health care, respect for women, treatment of minorities and, yes, Trump’s pugnacious and petty style.

Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist, told me that what is happening is actually bigger than Trump. 

Rather, a new pattern has emerged whereby voters respond less to economic winds than to a tribalism fostered by demographic changes, social media and more.

“Identity politics has really become the ecology you’re operating in,” he said. “Economics aren’t as dispositive as they used to be.” He added that many voters evaluate the vigor of the economy in terms of whether the person or party responsible for it is aligned with their tribe.

Lyn Ragsdale, a professor of political science at Rice University, noted that significantly more voters profess satisfaction with the economy than with Trump’s management of it, and she attributed much of that discrepancy to their qualms about his conduct and character.

In polls, she said, many voters indicate that they do not deem Trump fit for his office. “And if he’s not fit for office,” she said, “how could he be doing a good job on the economy?” Or so their thinking goes, and that is why they are so down on the job he is doing, though the stock market is up. His approval number, she said, is the better harbinger of what will happen Nov. 6.

Gallup released a poll last month in which the percentage of Americans who mentioned one or another aspect of the economy when asked about the most important issue in the country was 12, the lowest since Gallup began posing that question in its current fashion more than 25 years ago. In contrast, 29 percent mentioned “dissatisfaction with government/poor leadership.”

“People think the economy is doing well, but that’s not what they’re voting on,” Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, said recently. “They’re voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House.”

If that is so, maybe there is a bright side to this dark presidency. It is reminding us that we are not what we own. We are what we disown, including the sexism, racism, jingoism and other ugliness to which Trump and his enablers merrily play midwife. 

There is something above dollars. It is called decency.

Frank Bruni is a columnist for The New York Times.