{"id":116159,"date":"2020-11-20T03:37:52","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T00:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/trumps-post-election-antics-serve-his-needs-at-the-nations-expense\/"},"modified":"2020-11-20T03:37:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T00:37:52","slug":"trumps-post-election-antics-serve-his-needs-at-the-nations-expense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/trumps-post-election-antics-serve-his-needs-at-the-nations-expense\/","title":{"rendered":"#Trump\u2019s post-election antics serve his needs \u2014 at the nation\u2019s expense"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Trump\u2019s post-election antics serve his needs \u2014 at the nation\u2019s expense<\/strong>”
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\n No one expected President Trump to handle a defeat in the 2020 election well.<\/p>\n

It was predictable he would deny that he really lost and allege the vote was rigged, that he would tweet wild and misleading things and that he would lash out in absurd and sophomoric ways.<\/p>\n

All that was inevitable. What\u2019s been more disturbing is how far he and his allies have been willing to push it, not content only to delegitimize the election, but actively seeking to invalidate it.<\/p>\n

This was the vista opened by the refusal of Republican canvassers in Wayne County \u2014 which includes Detroit \u2014 to certify the county\u2019s election results on Tuesday, before relenting.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s central failing as president has been his inability to distinguish between his personal interest and the public interest. No president in memory has made less of an effort to allow the institution of the presidency to shape him and to conform to the constraints it imposes. Instead, he has acted as if he is the host of \u201cCelebrity App<\/a>rentice,\u201d merely relocated to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and with more Twitter<\/a> followers.<\/p>\n

As a personal matter, his handling of the election has been a runaway success. For him, the potential downside of elected office was courting the humiliation of defeat experienced by almost \u00adevery major politician at some point in their careers. It would have been better if Trump had avoided this by winning the election \u2014 and doing the innumerable easy things he could have done to help his cause \u2014 but successfully branding the election as stolen is second best for Trump\u2019s own purposes.<\/p>\n

What does he care if it comes at the cost of trampling the precedent of graceful exits by defeated US presidents going back to John Adams in 1800?<\/p>\n

Given how close the election was in key battlegrounds, and how the vote count shifted against Trump after election night, it was inevitable Republicans would have suspicions about the process. But it\u2019s wrong for Trump to fuel the doubts with a constant flow of bad information and conspiracy theories \u2014 just as elected Democrats and the media never should have played up the cockamamie idea that the Russians stole the election in 2016.<\/p>\n

Elected Republicans have been giving Trump lots of running room, on grounds that he should have the chance to ferret out fraud and to have his day in court.<\/p>\n

This is fine as far as it goes, so long as results that withstand scrutiny are honored.<\/p>\n

In Wayne County, the discrepancies that motivated the GOP canvassers were vanishingly small. According to The Detroit Free Press, the majority of Election Day precincts and absent voter boards with mismatches had discrepancies of three or fewer votes, amounting to roughly 387 votes. Trump lost Michigan by about 150,000 votes \u2014 and slightly overperformed in Wayne County.<\/p>\n

According to Robert Costa<\/a> of The Washington Post, Rudy Giuliani\u2019s endgame<\/a> is to block enough certifications to get the election into the House. If this is an accurate rendering of the thinking, it makes zero sense.<\/p>\n

The House of Representatives takes up a presidential election if no one gets a majority of the \u00adappointed electors; in other words, a candidate can be below 270 electors and still win. This means that Team Trump could block the certifications in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada \u2014 and still lose to Joe Biden, 233-232.<\/p>\n

To go down this route, Team Trump needs to pile another implausibility on top of blocking certifications and have the legislatures appoint Trump electors in stark defiance of the election results \u2014 precipitating a constitutional crisis that Trump would ultimately lose, and deserve to.<\/p>\n

Trump has such a stronghold on the GOP base that elected Republicans feel the need to play along with his deep-seated inability to admit defeat.<\/p>\n

The slogan of counting every \u201clegal vote\u201d is a safe harbor that all Republicans can hew to, but it should go without saying that it must mean counting \u2014 and certifying \u2014 valid votes for Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Twitter: @RichLowry <\/em>\n <\/div>\n