Let’s Talk About This Half-Assed ‘Orderly Transition’ Trump Promised

That’s just another lie.

Monday, Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that impeaching Donald Trump ... again would do “far more harm than good" because Trump had finally, at long last, conceded defeat and committed to an “orderly transfer of power."

I’m disappointed to hear the House is proceeding with a second impeachment given there are only nine days left in a… https: //t.co/9WnMzWO4xT

— Lindsey Graham (@Lindsey Graham) 1610397804.0 

This is, of course, free range horse shit. Republicans simultaneously argue that Democrats are petty and vindictive to repeach Trump when he's only in office for another eight days, but somehow a single week and some change constitutes an “orderly transition."

Trump's democracy-shredding temper tantrum squandered 70 days of the necessary knowledge transfer and preparation for Joe Biden's incoming administration. Emily Murphy, Trump's stooge in the GSA, didn't release transition funds until three weeks after the election. She whined that she couldn't “ascertain a winner" any earlier but that was because Trump refused to concede reality.

The Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget were still obstructing the president-elect's team in late December, weeks after Electoral College officially voted for Biden (not Trump, because Trump lost).

"We've encountered roadblocks from the political leadership in the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget," Biden said after being briefed remotely by his national-security and foreign-policy agency review teams. "Right now we're not getting all the information we need from the outgoing administration in key national-security areas."

Trump supporters aren't America's only enemies right now. Trump's lies and delusions have left the country exposed to potential threats for no good reason. Trump's Republican enablers have compared the non-transition to the truncated 2000 transition, but George W. Bush had 39 days and, most importantly, Al Gore had more than a Kraken's prayer of winning.

We are also in the midst of a global pandemic that's killed 376,476 Americans. Trump refused to invite the Biden transition team to the COVID-19 vaccine summit meeting in December because he still believed he could bribe, borrow, and mostly steal his way back into the White House.

TRUMP: We're going to have to see who the next administration is. Because we won in those swing states ... Hopefully, the next administration will be the Trump administration.

The safe harbor deadline had already passed. There were 42 days of transition time life left but Trump was still Kraken up with absurd lawsuits.

Facebook reminded me this morning that four years ago, the Senate was holding confirmation hearings for Ben Carson, Trump's pick to screw over the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Senate hearings for most of Trump's Cabinet were underway by this point in 2017.

Republicans are blinding us with gaslights when they suggest that impeachment would derail Biden's agenda. The only reason Biden will have to play catch up is because of Trump's impeachable actions. There was never any reason to contest an election that even Mitch McConnell admits wasn't that close. 

Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah said Friday that she resigned in December because she had "growing concerns about the fact that I felt like we were misleading the public with this endeavor to say that the election was stolen." It was "abundantly clear we just didn't win." Most damning is that Trump's loss wasn't a 2016-style upset. 

FARAH: The results of the election almost perfectly aligned with our internal polling. So this notion that everyone's kind of surprised and it turned out so different than we were expecting—I mean, from what I was read into, we always knew Pennsylvania was going to be a huge uphill battle, as was Arizona. North Carolina would be a squeaker. We'd win Florida.

Georgia was the one that we just did not adequately have a read on, on how close that would be. But none of this should have come as a surprise to anyone who was following the data.

There was simply no excuse for this shit.

Graham gave Trump one of his special, low-expectation-having cookies for grudgingly admitting that his months-long coup had failed, but Trump has refused to attend Biden's inauguration nor has he renounced his lies about a rigged election.

The outgoing president inviting his successor to the White House and solemnly watching as he's sworn in on Inauguration Day aren't superficial photo ops you can ignore because you're a small, petty man. It signifies to the nation and the world that power was transferred peacefully.

Trump's “injured pride" has denied America an “orderly transition" and the nation will pay the price. Let's hope the cost isn't more human lives.

[ CNN / Politico ]

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