THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER23, 2020 13
for Trump to come to terms with real-
ity, and for Republican leaders to stop
enabling him. Mitch McConnell, the
Senate Majority Leader, was among
the many elected Republicans who de-
clared that the President had every right
to pursue his grievances in the courts.
Yet Trump’s accusations have not gained
credibility since Rudy Giuliani deliv-
ered a Borat-worthy press conference
at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, that
new Philadelphia landmark, on the day
Biden became President-elect. Times
reporters surveyed election administra-
tors in all fifty states and reported that
the officials had found no evidence of
significant voting issues. At least ten
lawsuits filed by Trump’s campaign or
allies have been dismissed by the courts
already. This past Wednesday, after
promising “shocking” evidence of wrong-
doing in Michigan, Trump’s campaign
released affidavits by poll watchers who
had complained, as the Washington Post
reporter David Fahrenthold wrote, aboutCOMMENT
FAILURESOFDUTY
F
or much of Donald Trump’s reëlec-
tion campaign, he spread the cal-
umny that voting by mail would be used
for large-scale fraud in November, and
he made clear that if he lost he would
say that he was robbed and would seek
victory in the courts. Trump’s gambit
was a variant of election-manipulation
schemes familiar in countries like Pa-
kistan and Belarus. His plan had holes,
such as an absence of evidence, yet he
seemed to think that he had a plausi-
ble chance, if the election was narrowly
decided and he brought a case before
the Supreme Court.
But the election wasn’t close: Joe Biden
won the national popular vote by more
than five million votes, and he seems
likely, once the last ballots are counted
and recounted, to win the Electoral Col-
lege by nearly the same margin that
Trump had over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Trump has doubled down on his fraud
ploy anyway. On November 7th, after
the Associated Press and major televi-
sion networks declared Biden the coun-
try’s forty-sixth President, Trump tweeted,
“i won the election.... bad things
happened.” Since then, he has mainly
sequestered himself in the White House
while unleashing dozens of tweets and
retweets containing false allegations,
which Twitter has continually flagged
as unreliable.
Last week, Biden offered a measured
take on the President’s refusal to con-
cede: “I just think it’s an embarrass-
ment, quite frankly.” He seemed to ac-
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOÃO FAZENDAcept that it might require some time
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
such violations as “loud noises” and
“mean stares.”
Trump, according to the Times, has
asked White House advisers about using
Republican-controlled legislatures in
states like Pennsylvania to hijack the
Electoral College, by appointing electors
who would ignore official vote counts
and return him to power. Even loose
talk about such a maneuver suggests
how unscrupulous Trump remains as
he contemplates his loss of office. Nor
is he the only one to muse recklessly
about antidemocratic outcomes in the
weeks ahead. Asked if the Administration
was jeopardizing national security by re-
fusing to coöperate with Biden’s transi-
tion, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
smiled and said, “There will be a smooth
transition to a second Trump Adminis-
tration.” He gave the impression that he
was pranking liberals about their fears
of a Trump coup d’état, even as he and
other loyalists wait obediently for the
President to decide whether to accept
his obvious defeat. “I think that the whole
Republican Party has been put in a po-
sition, with a few notable exceptions, of
being mildly intimidated by the sitting
President,” Biden noted.
Typically, the best way to understand
Trump’s actions is to ask what’s in it
for him. Four more years in the White
House would extend his immunity from
New York prosecutors conducting ac-
tive investigations into possible crimi-
nal activity, ease pressure from bank
creditors, and further enrich his family
businesses: a win-win-win. Assuming
that the President fails to rig a second
term, he is fashioning a story about how
corrupt Democrats foiled his reëlection,