By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 6, 2020 ~
Americans got a taste last night of how gracefully Donald Trump might hand over the reins of power if he loses this election. A number of networks chose to cut off his remarks from the White House last night as Trump said that he had won the election if you count the “legal” votes. In Trump’s head, the votes legally cast by mail-in ballots by duly registered voters are “illegal.”
Trump’s remarks came as his lawyers both threatened to file and did file lawsuits attempting to stop the counting of mail-in ballots in states where the Trump campaign is contemplating a potential loss. No one in the Trump campaign has produced any evidence of fraud in the election despite Trump’s statement on Wednesday that a fraud is taking place.
Some of the threats have not been backed up with actual lawsuit filings and remain just threats. Not too many lawyers are going to be willing to put their license to practice law on the line by filing a frivolous lawsuit devoid of evidence of illegal voting. Judges have been known to sanction and fine lawyers over such actions.
The New York Times has a story up today suggesting that there may still be hope for a stimulus bill even if Trump loses the election. Past history suggests that Trump would, instead, do whatever he could to make life difficult for his successor.
Consider how Trump treated Arnold Schwarzenegger, his replacement on the reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” On January 6, 2017, as President-elect, Trump tweeted this about Schwarzenegger:
“Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got ‘swamped’ (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for being a movie star — and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary.”
Schwarzenegger responded with his own Tweet:
“There’s nothing more important than the people’s work, @realDonaldTrump. I wish you the best of luck and I hope you’ll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings.”
As for how interested Trump will be after the election results are finalized in controlling the upsurge in the pandemic in the United States and preventing tens of thousands of needless deaths, the words of his niece, Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, offer important insights. In her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Mary Trump writes this about her Uncle:
“The costs and benefits of governing are considered in purely financial terms, as if the US Treasury were his personal piggy bank. To him, every dollar going out was his loss, while every dollar saved was his gain. In the midst of obscene plenty, one person, using all of the levers of power and taking every advantage at his disposal, would benefit himself and, conditionally, his immediate family, his cronies, and his sycophants; for the rest, there would never be enough to go around, which was exactly how my grandfather ran our family.
“It’s extraordinary that for all of the attention and coverage that Donald has received in the last fifty years, he’s been subjected to very little scrutiny. Though his character flaws and aberrant behavior have been remarked upon and joked about, there’s been very little effort to understand not only why be became who he is but how he’s consistently failed up despite his glaring lack of fitness.
“Donald has, in some sense, always been institutionalized, shielded from his limitations or his need to succeed on his own in the world. Honest work was never demanded of him, and no matter how badly he failed, he was rewarded in ways that are almost unfathomable. He continues to be protected from his own disasters in the White House, where a claque of loyalists applauds his every pronouncement or covers up his possible criminal negligence by normalizing it to the point that we’ve become almost numb to the accumulating transgressions. But now the stakes are far higher than they’ve ever been before; they are literally life and death. Unlike any previous time in his life, Donald’s failing cannot be hidden or ignored because they threaten us all.”
The test will be if the sycophantic Senate Republicans who protected Trump during the impeachment trial step up to the plate now and denounce his irresponsible allegations of fraud in the election. Yesterday, there was a notable number of Republican officials or former officials doing just that.
