Tag: sore loser Trump

Trump trashes McConnell to fellow Republicans

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President Trump lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday night for acknowledging Joe Biden won the election, sending a slide to Republican lawmakers taking credit for saving McConnell’s career with a tweet and robocall.

Why it matters: It’s an extraordinary broadside against McConnell by the sitting president and most popular Republican in the party, ahead of a crucial runoff election in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate.

  • “Sadly, Mitch forgot,” reads the top of the slide sent to Republican senators by Trump’s personal assistant, written in red for emphasis. “He was the first one off the ship.”

Between the lines: While both the message and its delivery targeted McConnell, they also carried a subtle warning to other Republicans who may follow suit as the president grasps at the last straws of his election-fraud claim. Continue reading.

‘A real mess’: Trump is leaving behind crises and undermining Biden before he takes office

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When President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office on Jan. 20, the list of crises he will face includes a massive cyber intrusion, a still-raging global pandemic, a slowing economic recovery and a lingering reckoning over the nation’s racial tensions.

President Trump is not making his job any easier and, in several ways, appears to be actively making it harder — going to extraordinary lengths to disrupt and undermine the traditional transition from one administration to another despite the nation’s many crises.

Trump has sought to play down or even deny the still-expanding cybersecurity breach that many experts blame on Russia, even as its impact has spread to a growing number of federal agencies. The delayed and turbulent transition process could complicate the Biden administration’s ability to address the challenge and shore up the nation’s cyber defenses. Continue reading.

Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden

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Outgoing Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday that he saw no basis for the federal government seizing voting machines and that he did not intend to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud — again breaking with President Trump as the commander in chief entertains increasingly desperate measures to overturn the election.

At a news conference to announce charges in a decades-old terrorism case, Barr — who has just two days left in office — was peppered with questions about whether he would consider steps proposed by allies of the president to advance Trump’s claims of massive voter fraud.

Barr said that while he was “sure there was fraud in this election,” he had not seen evidence that it was so “systemic or broad-based” that it would change the result. He asserted he saw “no basis now for seizing machines by the federal government,” and he would not name a special counsel to explore the allegations of Trump and his allies. Continue reading.

Trump calls Bolton ‘one of the dumbest people in Washington’ after former aide weighs in on martial law report

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President Trump blasted John Bolton as “one of the dumbest people in Washington” after his former national security adviser expressed alarm over a report that Trump considered a suggestion to implement martial law.

“What would Bolton, one of the dumbest people in Washington, know? Wasn’t he the person who so stupidly said, on television, ‘Libyan solution’, when describing what the U.S. was going to do for North Korea?” Trump asked in a tweet early Sunday. “I’ve got plenty of other Bolton ‘stupid stories.’”

Bolton on Saturday reacted to a report that Trump had discussed a proposal by the president’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to “rerun” the presidential election under military supervision, calling it “appalling.”  Continue reading.

Is Trump Cracking Under the Weight of Losing?

Getting the boot from the White House is an undeniable ego blow for a man who has never admitted defeat.

Donald Trump has never had a week like the week he just had. On the heels of the Supreme Court’s knock-back and the Electoral College’s knockout, some of his most reliable supporters—Mitch McConnell, Vladimir Putin, Newsmax—acknowledged and affirmed the actual fact of the matter. Trump is a loser.

Consequently, he is plainly out of sorts, say former close associates, longtime Trump watchers and mental health experts.

It’s not just his odd behavior—the testy, tiny desk session with the press, the stilted Medal of Freedom ceremony that ended with his awkward exit, the cut-short trip to the Army-Navy football game. It’s even more pointedly his conspicuous and ongoing absences. The narcissistic Trump has spent the last half a century—but especially the last half a decade—making himself and keeping himself the most paid-attention-to person on the planet. But in the month and a half since Election Day, Trump has been seen and heard relatively sparingly and sporadically. No–showing unexpectedly at a Christmas party, sticking to consistently sparse public schedules and speaking mainly through his increasingly manic Twitter feed, he’s been fixated more than anything else on his baseless insistence that he won the election when he did not. Continue reading.

A frustrated Trump redoubles efforts to overturn election result

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President Trump has intensified efforts to overturn the election, raising a series of radical measures in recent days, including military intervention, seizing voting machines and a 13th-hour appeal to the Supreme Court.

On Sunday, Trump said in a radio interview that he had spoken with Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) about challenging the electoral vote count when the House and Senate convene on Jan. 6 to formally affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

“He’s so excited,” Trump said of Tuberville. “He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States.’ He said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ He’s great. Great senator.” Continue reading.

Trump wants Supreme Court to overturn Pa. election results

WASHINGTON — Undeterred by dismissals and admonitions from judges, President Donald Trump’s campaign continued with its unprecedented efforts to overturn the results of the Nov 3. election Sunday, saying it had filed a new petition with the Supreme Court.

The petition seeks to reverse a trio of Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases having to do with mail-in ballots and asks the court to reject voters’ will and allow the Pennsylvania General Assembly to pick its own slate of electors.

While the prospect of the highest court in the land throwing out the results of a democratic election based on unfounded charges of voter fraud is extraordinary unlikely, it wouldn’t change the outcome. President-elect Joe Biden would still be the winner even without Pennsylvania because of his wide margin of victory in the Electoral College. Continue reading.

Trump suggested naming Sidney Powell as special counsel on election in Oval Office meeting, reports say

During a White House meeting Friday, President Donald Trump floated the idea of naming conservative attorney Sidney Powell as a special counsel to investigate his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden, according to multiple media reports. 

In the Oval Office meeting, which was first reported by The New York Times, Trump discussedwith his advisers the possibility of appointing Powell to investigate election fraud claims and to potentially seize voting machines that Trump claimed were rigged against him.

Most of the advisers at the White House meeting, which included Powell, opposed the ideas. According to the Times, among those objecting to the suggestion of Powell as special counsel were Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani – who joined by phone – White House counsel Pat Cipollone and chief of staff Mark Meadows. Continue reading.

Even as Trump vows to keep fighting, his aides are quietly starting to move on

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Vice President Pence has begun looking for a new home in the Washington suburbs, and he’s planning a valedictory foreign trip to begin the day Congress counts the electoral college votes.

Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has discussed opening a consulting firm with other White House aides and allies.

Top economic adviser Larry Kudlow has told friends he is planning to return to broadcasting, and he has his next gigs lined up. Continue reading.

Republicans Talk ’Secession,” But Who Would That Hurt?

The loudest sound on the American far right today is the angry whining emitted by sore losers who claim their candidate was defrauded but know for a fact that he was simply defeated. Their tune is grating, but their seditious words are troubling, with supporters of President Donald Trump repeatedly warning of “civil war” and even “secession.” Fans of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh hear those ominous words every day now.

Presumably, such divisive sentiment is why many “conservatives” are so enamored of Confederate flags and other such symbols of treason. If the democratic process doesn’t give them what they want, they threaten bloodshed and the destruction of the nation to which they once pretended to pledge allegiance.

For the most part, those menacing broadsides are just impotent bluster. America has a perennial surplus of bullies who brandish weapons to bolster their fragile masculinity and intimidate their adversaries. A small cohort of those goons are dangerous and even potentially deadly; the most consistent perpetrators of domestic terrorism in recent years have been white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists, not radical Islamic terrorists. Rolling up the violent political gangsters should be a top priority for President-elect Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which will follow four dark years when the Trump administration tolerated and even encouraged them. Continue reading.