Ending With a Whimper

The New York Times and other media have called all the states now, with Arizona and Georgia going to Joe Biden and North Carolina to Trump. This gives us Electoral College votes of 306 to 232. I believe these are the same numbers won in the 2016 election — Trump 306, Clinton 232. The vote in the Electoral College was slightly different because of faithless electors.

Trump’s lawsuits to challenge the vote are going nowhere, and now the law firms representing him — and becoming the butts of jokes — are distancing themselves.

Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, the law firm leading the Trump campaign’s efforts to challenge the presidential election results in Pennsylvania, abruptly withdrew from a federal lawsuit that it had filed on behalf of the campaign. That followed a similar move by an Arizona law firm that was representing the Republican Party as it challenged that state’s results.

And on Friday, a top lawyer at Jones Day, which has represented Mr. Trump’s campaigns for more than four years, told colleagues during a video conference call that Jones Day would not get involved in additional litigation in this election.

No evidence of fraud has yet come to light, in spite of the tireless efforts of MAGA-heads to create some.

See also Paul Waldman, Trump’s strategy to have the courts swing the election lies in tatters.

Oh, and the pandemic is out of control. Trump stopped even pretending to do anything about it awhile back. Mike Pence, the head of the pandemic task force, went on vacation somewhere.

Meanwhile, more than 130 Secret Service officers assigned to protect Trump are either infected or quarantined, and at least 40 people in Trump’s inner circle have caught the virus, the latest being Corey Lewandowski.

A couple of days ago, David Nakamura at WaPo wrote,

On Thursday, six American service members were killed in a helicopter crash during a peacekeeping mission in Egypt. Tropical Storm Eta made landfall in North Florida, contributing to severe flooding. The number of Americans infected with the novel coronavirus continued at a record-setting pace, sending the stock market tumbling.

At the White House, President Trump spent the day as he has most others this week — sequestered from public view, tweeting grievances, falsehoods and misinformation about the election results and about Fox News’s coverage of him.

It’s not like Trump ever did the job, but now he’s not even going through the motions. He did show up at Arlington this year (unlike, say, in 2018), but other than that he’s been blessedly out of view.

In spite of being utterly disinterested in the job of president, Trump is still refusing to let go of it. The Biden transition is still being denied briefings and resources. At some point Trump’s got to be forced to cooperate with reality. CNN reports that Joe Biden is not waiting for the White House but is setting up an independent network of governors, health professionals and businesses to prepare to take over the pandemic response. That may be just as well, come to think of it.

Maybe, some time next year, we’ll find out what Jared Kushner did with all the PPE and generators and whatnot his crew confiscated.

Trump is still fighting the election. Even today. Quint Forgy just wrote at Politico,

In a new interview, Trump refused to acknowledge that he had been beaten by President-elect Joe Biden, insisting that his campaign’s election-related legal challenges would reverse the race’s outcome and arguing that Americans should “never bet against me.”

The unrealistic prediction from the president, published in the Friday edition of Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York’s newsletter, represented some of Trump’s first remarks to a member of the news media since Biden was declared the winner of the election last weekend.

Chalres Pierce: This May Be the Most Singularly Petty Bullsh*t I’ve Seen in All My Born Days.

There’s supposed to be a Million MAGA March in Washington DC tomorrow. I’m hoping counter-demonstrators stay away and just let the asshats parade around awhile and go home. Whatever violence or vandalism happens will be on them.

If Congress doesn’t act next week to force Trump to cooperate with the transition — well, I’m not sure what can be done. I’m a bit tired of listening to comments about how Trump needs time to “process.” Nobody else ever needed time to “process.”

Trump can still do a lot of damage, if the Senate lets him, but for the most part there’s not much left to the Trump Era but the whimper. Oh, and the grift. I’m sure there’s still some money that can be bilked out of the faithful somehow.

Nate Beeler-Counterpoint