A2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020
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It has been
almost three
weeks since
President Trump
stepped to a
lectern in the
White House in
the early hours of
Nov. 4 to declare
that the election
was being stolen
from him. It was a fabrication
designed to turn President-elect
Joe Biden into an illegitimate
president and has continued
apace ever since. It will not stop
with Biden’s swearing-in on
Jan. 20.
Any thoughts Trump might
have had of overturning the
election were a failed enterprise
from the start. On Friday, those
hopes were dealt twin blows
when Georgia’s secretary of state
certified Biden as the winner
there and Republican legislative
leaders from Michigan, after
meeting with the president,
signaled they would do nothing
to try to undermine the results.
Biden has an electoral college
majority, and the certification
process continues to gather
steam.
Through these weeks, the
president and his legal team
have failed to produce credible
evidence of systematic or
widespread fraud. Now they are
resorting to wild allegations of a
grand conspiracy on the part of
Biden and the Democrats —
charges repeatedly debunked.
This effort is being led by
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was
once a reputable mayor of New
York. These claims of fraud are
in themselves a fraudulent and
cynical enterprise.
Judging by his actions, Trump
appears to have a motive other
than overturning the election.
He is determined to cripple
Biden’s presidency even before it
becomes official. No defeated
president has ever undertaken
such an audacious and
a nti-democratic act. There are
short-term and longer-term
consequences that could deeply
affect Biden’s ability to govern.
Trump has thrown up
immediate obstacles to the
Biden transition. Without an
official ascertainment from
Emily Murphy, head of the
General Services
Administration, Biden and his
team have been denied
necessary transition funding
and access to the government
departments and agencies they
will soon inherit.
This is a mean-spirited effort
on the part of the president to
gum up what should be an
orderly, nonpartisan process.
Even absent the GSA stamp of
approval, Biden is proceeding
ahead with what experts say are
the most important priorities of
the transition period: building a
new government and sketching
out legislative priorities to have
a quick start in office.
Biden has already designated
many of the most senior
members of his White House
staff, a critically important set of
decisions that assures he willhave a team in place and already
operating when he is sworn in.
He also has begun to settle on
his Cabinet: Last week, Biden
said he has picked his treasury
secretary and will unveil that
person — and perhaps other
Cabinet appointees — just
before or after Thanksgiving.
Access to the agencies, while
necessary, is not that crucial at
this point, according to several
people who have gone through
past transitions. They say that
the scores of people on Biden’s
agency transition teams have
considerable knowledge of the
federal bureaucracy and even
their own networks within
agencies to tap, absent an
official start to the transition.
Biden also hasn’t yet been
able to get classified intelligence
briefings, and even a number of
Republicans say it’s time he did.
But it is not as though Biden
doesn’t know the world, its hot
spots and many of its leaders.
Decades of experience give him
a foundation that someone
without that background — say
Donald Trump four years ago —
would not have. Not having
these briefings isn’t ideal but, for
the time, isn’t a major setback.
There are two things
currently blocked to the Biden
team that could however cause
problems in the early days of his
presidency. One is the lack of
access to the information about
plans for distributing hundreds
of millions of doses of a
coronavirus vaccine. Getting the
vaccine to as many Americans as
possible — and persuading as
many Americans as possible to
take it — will fall on Biden’s
shoulders. The earlier his team
is on top of this, the better it will
be for everyone.
A second problem is the lack
of access to the FBI to begin the
background checks required for
senior positions, including
Cabinet nominees. The longer
those are delayed, the more
likely Biden will begin his term
with many Cabinet nominees
awaiting confirmation, adding
to the burdens of the new White
House staff to run the
government.
That’s the situation now. After
the inauguration will come
other problems for Biden as hebegins to move his agenda. At
this moment, he does not know
whether he will have a Senate in
Democratic hands or still under
the control of the Republicans
and Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.). The answer
to that awaits the two Jan. 5
runoff elections in Georgia, both
of which Democrats must win to
gain control.
The difference between
having a 50-50 split, with Vice
President-elect Kamala D. Harris
there to break any ties, and a
Republican majority is
enormous. One former Obama
administration official called it
“the difference between having a
transformational presidency
versus having to negotiate
everything with a Republican
Senate.” Biden must prepare for
either outcome.
There’s little doubt that
Biden’s first priority will be the
coronavirus pandemic — setting
policies to contain the spread of
the virus, ramping up
production of personal
protective equipment,
establishing a more reliable
system for testing and assuring
swift and efficient distribution
of a vaccine. The other part of
the pandemic agenda will be to
provide economic relief to the
many millions of Americans
who are suffering as well as to
state and local governments
whose budgets have been
battered by their efforts to stem
the disease.
Beyond that, Biden will have
to set the priority list from
among his various campaign
promises: health care, climate,
immigration, and policing and
racial justice. There are
constituencies inside the
Democratic Party for each of
them.
Two questions arise: Will
Trump seek to use his influence
as the titular head of the GOP to
push Republican lawmakers to
scuttle Biden’s priorities? Will
Biden be forced to trim his sails
— at the risk of an intraparty
battle with the left — to seek
even modest bipartisan support?
How the Trump presidency
ends will affect how the Biden
presidency begins.
Nathaniel Persily, an elections
expert and a professor atStanford Law School, said
Republicans won’t easily dial
back the hostility engendered by
their implicit embrace of
Trump’s claims of a stolen
election. “You can’t
systematically for several
months claim the president
engaged in fraud and have a civil
relationship in matters of public
policy,” he said.
Still, some analysts see the
greatest threat to Biden’s
presidency as the likelihood of a
four-year effort to undermine
the new administration, led by a
vindictive Trump. He has always
looked for scapegoats when
things don’t go his way, and in
this, the greatest setback of his
life, he has manufactured the
perfect excuse: He was robbed.
“I’m afraid that as ex-
president, Trump is going to
keep up a steady drumbeat... to
try to drive home one point: that
the election was stolen from
him, that Joe Biden is an
illegitimate president and that
this can only be resolved by
Biden’s removal from office
through an election and his
replacement by Donald J.
Trump,” said William Galston of
the Brookings Institution.
This assault on the system,
the government, the integrity of
elections, the institutions of
democracy, and on the truth,
means Biden will take the oath
of office with perhaps a third or
more of the electorate viewing
him as illegitimate. No amount
of wooing will bring them
around however genuine Biden
is in his outreach.
Biden has been careful so far,
as he was during the campaign,
not to get into a mud slinging
match with the president. He
has maintained his call for unity
and expressed his determination
to be a president who helps to
heal the country. He may have
no other choice, even at the
expense of progress on some of
his agenda.
A few Republicans have said,
“Enough.” The strongest rebuke
of the president has come from
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who
made his view of Trump clear by
voting to convict the president
of an impeachable offense
during the Senate trial last
winter. Most Republicans
continue in silence or indirect
assent. Until that changes, until,
say, McConnell emphatically
says enough, Trump will be free
to pursue his destructive
campaign to undermine a duly
elected new president.
Before the election, Trump
repeatedly declined to say he
would assure a peaceful
transition of power and now it’s
clear that he never intended to
accept defeat. Persily equated
the unfolding events with “the
kind of thing you see in
struggling democracies around
the world, where large factions
are unwilling to put down their
arms from the campaign.” This
is the America Biden will inherit
in just over eight weeks, with an
ex-president in exile plotting a
possible return.
[email protected]A spiteful Trump s eeks to cripple Biden’s presidency
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Trump speaks at the White House in t he e arly hours of
Nov. 4, making a premature claim of victory and promising to
mount legal challenges against alleged widespread election fraud.Dan Balz
THE SUNDAY
TAKETALK SHOWSGuests to be interviewed Sunday on major television talk shows9 a.m. FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG)
Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at
the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
9 a.m. STATE OF THE UNION ( CNN)
Moncef Slaoui, head of the government’s coronavirus
vaccine effort; Jen Psaki, adviser to President-elect Joe
Biden’s transition team; Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R);
John Bolton, former national security adviser to President
Trump.
9 a.m. THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA)
Slaoui; Ron Klain, chief of staff to Biden.
10:30 a.m. MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC)
Slaoui; Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.); Sen. Kevin Cramer
(R-N.D.).
10:30 a.m. FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA)
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases; H.R. McMaster, former national
security adviser to Trump; CVS CEO Larry Merlo; Symone
Sanders, adviser to Biden’s transition team.
All programs will be streamed
live at washingtonpostlive.com, on
Facebook Live, YouTube, and
Twitter. Email postlive@washpost.
com to submit questions for our
upcoming speakers.Monday, Nov. 22 | 11:30 a.m.A Washington Post Live SpecialBarack Obama, former U.S.
presidentHosted by Michele Norris and Mellon
Foundation President Elizabeth
AlexanderMonday, Nov. 22 | 1 p.m.The Path Forward: Combating
Covid-Anthony S. Fauci, director of the
National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious DiseasesHosted by Robert CostaUpcoming Washington
Post Live eventsNEW YORKRockefeller Center
opens ice skating rinkThe Rockefeller Center ice-
skating rink is opening in a
limited way but on time for the
holidays. The s unken rink in
midtown Manhattan iswelcoming skaters Saturday
afternoon as part of a tradition
dating to the 1930 s, according to
the Rockefeller Center website.
The rink is operating at
reduced capacity, with skate
time limited to 50 minutes.
Masks are required as a further
pandemic safety measure.
The website says there’s a
legend that the rink wasinspired by “a Depression-era
skate salesman who
demonstrated his product by
skating on the frozen water of
the Rockefeller Center
fountain.”
Another seasonal fixture, the
Rockefeller Center Christmas
tree, went up last weekend and
is scheduled to be lighted Dec. 2.
— Associated PressWISCONSINPolice seeking suspect
in mall shootingPolice said Saturday that
they’re still searching for a man
suspected in a shooting at a
Wisconsin mall that injured
eight people.
“Investigators are working
tirelessly to identify and
apprehend the suspect from
yesterday’s shooting at Mayfair
Mall,” the Wauwatosa Police
Department said in a tweet
Saturday.
Police also asked anyone who
witnessed the shooting Friday to
contact them.
Chief Barry Weber gave no
motive for the attack at the
Mayfair Mall during a briefing
Friday evening. He said the
shooter had left the scene before
officers arrived, and that the
extent of the victims’ injuries
was unknown.
Police also said the shooting
apparently stemmed from an
altercation and was not a
random act.
Authorities said the mall was
closed Saturday and
investigators were on the scene
overnight.
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