Trump’s claims that the election was somehow stolen from him have gained no traction in any of the dozens of courts that he and his allies have petitioned, including the Supreme Court, with three justices he appointed. “One of the things, I think, that everyone has said is that this call was not a helpful call,” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, one of the Republicans pushing to reject Biden electors from swing states, conceded on Fox News.
The call was unseemly enough that even some of the president’s allies distanced themselves. “So what are we going to do here, folks?” Mr. Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to flip the election outcome, appealing to him as a Republican to show loyalty and implicitly threatening criminal charges if he refused.
He ran through one unfounded conspiracy theory after another, pushed Mr. Trump tweeted a false version of the conversation, provided a breathtaking case study of how far the president is willing to go to preserve power. Raffensperger, which was recorded and released to the news media after Mr. “Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, and his pressure tactics to that end with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, are an example of how authoritarianism works in the 21st century,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.” “Today’s leaders come in through elections and then manipulate elections to stay in office - until they get enough power to force the hand of legislative bodies to keep them there indefinitely, as Putin and Orban have done.” Putin in Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary. Trump’s efforts ring familiar to many who have studied authoritarian regimes in countries around the world, like those run by President Vladimir V. He denied subverting democracy, posting a quote he attributed to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of his Republican allies: “We are not acting to thwart the Democratic process, we are acting to protect it.”īut Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday, quickly drawing a warning label from the social media firm. “The ‘Surrender Caucus’ within the Republican Party will go down in infamy as weak and ineffective ‘guardians’ of our Nation, who were willing to accept the certification of fraudulent presidential numbers!” Mr. The idea has disturbed even many senior Republicans and it is guaranteed to fail, much to the president’s frustration. Biden’s victory when Congress meets on Wednesday, seeking to turn what has historically been a ceremonial moment into a last-ditch showdown over the election. His erratic behavior has so alarmed the military that he might try to use force to stay in the White House that every living former defense secretary - including two he appointed himself - issued a warning against the armed forces becoming involved.Īnd he has encouraged Vice President Mike Pence and congressional allies to do anything they can to block the final formal declaration of Mr. Biden’s inauguration, which is set in stone by the Constitution, and he met with a former adviser urging him to declare martial law. He and his staff have floated the idea of delaying Mr. He called the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House twice to do the same. He has summoned Michigan’s Republican legislature leaders to the White House to pressure them to change their state’s results. He has called the Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona to get them to intervene. Biden Jr.’s victory in that state only brought into stark relief what Mr. His hourlong telephone call over the weekend with Georgia’s chief election official, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” enough votes to overturn President-elect Joseph R. That he is almost certain to fail does not mitigate the damage he is doing to democracy by undermining public faith in the electoral system. 3 vote, but instead has pressed the boundaries of tradition, propriety and the law to find any way he can to cling to office beyond his term that expires in two weeks.
The president has gone well beyond simply venting his grievances or creating a face-saving narrative to explain away a loss, as advisers privately suggested he was doing in the days after the Nov.
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