At least 11 Republican senators and more than 100 representatives will file objections to the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory in the US Congress on Wednesday. They know they don’t stand a chance – and presumably they know that the allegations of election fraud are completely baseless, which is why the courts have dismissed them outright.
That’s what makes this game so dangerous: What the Trump loyalists are doing, flanked by thousands of aggressive right-wingers on the streets of the capital, is a direct attack on the heart of U.S. democracy.
It was quite refreshing that in recent days some more Republican leaders and even the Trump-loyal New York Post finally spoke out against the president in clear terms. But then, there are far too many major players who are not doing just that and are relaying Trump’s messages from the parallel universe.
It is a test of democratic institutions that even the most bitter Trump opponents would not have expected. Trump is pushing the rule of law ahead of him. He will fail, but in this way he is constantly pushing the boundaries of what is still understood as normal political debate.
Describing the political state of the U.S. as a “deep division” of the country has not been accurate for a long time: this is open hostility between two camps that can neither agree on a description of reality nor on solutions, or even agree on them.
The major parties are influenced differently: The left wing of the Democrats – actually, the social democratic wing – operates strictly within the institutional framework. The Republicans, on the other hand, driven by the Tea Party and evangelicals, had already slipped into the far-right camp before Trump. Trump is both the product and the finisher of this process.
Joe Biden’s idea of wanting to reconcile the USA has no chance.
Two and a half weeks before the end of his term in office, Donald Trump is continuing to try to overturn the results of the US presidential election by any means necessary. In a telephone call, he urged Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state responsible for elections in the U.S. state of Georgia, to “find” votes for him so that in the end he would be the winner there. U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris accused Trump of abuse of power. Numerous other Democrats – and some Republicans – also condemned the president’s actions.
The phone call between Trump and Raffensperger, a Republican, was first reported by The Washington Post. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than what we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said in the recording, which was available in full to the AP news agency.
The conversation raises questions about whether Trump violated election laws, said Rebecca Green of William and Mary Law School. Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Trump engaged in “reprehensible and potentially illegal conduct.”
According to certified election results from Georgia, Biden won there Nov. 3 by a narrow margin of 11,779 votes. The votes were recounted twice, once at Trump’s request. Several lawsuits filed by the Trump camp challenging the election results failed. Raffensperger said in the phone call Saturday that already in court, election officials have responded to the allegations. “We don’t agree that they won.”
Allegations long since debunked
Trump brought up a number of already familiar and already debunked allegations in the hour-long phone call, such as that hundreds of thousands of ballots had suddenly appeared in Fulton County and helped his Democratic rival Joe Biden win. In fact, only absentee ballots that tended to favor Biden were later counted.
Trump also threatened Raffensperger and his attorney Ryan Germany with criminal charges if they did not confirm that thousands of ballots from Fulton County had been destroyed. There is no evidence to prove that happened. “That’s a felony. And you can’t let that happen,” Trump told the pair. Also on the conference call were Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and several Trump lawyers, including Cleta Mitchell. “He has no idea,” Trump wrote on Twitter afterward about Raffensperger. The latter was “unwilling or unable” to answer questions about irregularities in the election.
by Xavier Cuesta – European Correspondent – TN