Mr. President, Pack Your Bags and Be Gone
Trump
wants to preserve, protect and defend only himself.
By Roger Cohen
Opinion
Columnist
- Nov. 13, 2020
The ruler broods, alone with his rage
and shame, undone by rejection, his mind, like Macbeth’s, “full of scorpions,”
plotting to overturn facts and destroy American democracy. His lackeys, and
only they remain, try to humor the master in his labyrinth.
Donald Trump, departing president, lost
in an election that a division of the Department of Homeland Security has now called “the
most secure in American history,” with no “evidence that any voting system
deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”
Mr. President, get the boxes, get the
tape, pack your bags and be gone.
He can’t. He won’t. It’s not in the
man. Truth is unbearable. Fraud! Rigged! Trump can no more accept defeat than
recall the fact that he took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States.”
His only vow is to
preserve, protect and defend himself. He has never been able to see beyond that
orange face in the mirror. No Bible offers consolation to this man, no creed,
no truth, no sense of decency, not even Fox News now, nothing.
With his victory in Arizona and
Georgia confirmed, Joe Biden, the president-elect, has 306 electoral
votes, 36 more than the 270 needed to take the White House. He will end up with
about 80 million popular votes, the most any candidate has ever gotten, and
over five million more than Trump.
No recount can turn these numbers
around. No evidence has emerged to back Trump’s lawsuits challenging the
outcomes. Biden did not squeak this victory. He won clearly, period.
Even Ted Olson, who successfully argued
for then-candidate George W. Bush in the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case,
says it’s over and Biden is president-elect, The National Law Journal reported.
“And we have — I do believe the election is over — and we do have a new
president,” Olson said. “And we
do because a large number of people expressed disapproval, whether one agrees
with that or not, of the manner, style and techniques of this particular
president.”
Except that it’s not over. Desperation
drives Trump to look, still, for a means to secure what Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo has called “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” The
Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, says it’s not over. They are complicit
in a power grab.
It’s come to this in
the United States of America. Trump has always been a danger to democratic
institutions and the rule of law. He’s empowered dictators across the world.
I’ve witnessed elections stolen in places like Iran. I never thought I would
see an attempt to deny the will of the American people.
My colleague Maggie Haberman described a recent White House meeting where Trump
pressed to know “whether Republican legislatures could pick pro-Trump electors
in a handful of key states and deliver him the electoral votes he needs to
change the math and give him a second term.”
This is Trump’s so-called Hail Mary
plan. In plain language, it’s a potential political coup. Biden beat Trump by
148,000 votes in Michigan, 58,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 36,000 votes in
Nevada, 20,000 votes in Wisconsin, 14,000 votes in Georgia and 11,000 votes in
Arizona. For Trump to win, as Andrew Prokop wrote in Vox, he
needs to “change the outcome in at least three of those states — a very tall
order.”
Article II of the Constitution says
that the states must appoint electors to the Electoral College “in such manner
as the Legislature thereof may direct.” The state legislatures of Wisconsin,
Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania are Republican-controlled. How does
this look to a man like Trump who, as my friend Greg Schwed, a lawyer, put it
to me, has never “failed to take the path that would preserve his vanity and
power, no matter what law or tradition it would violate?”
It looks like possible salvation.
Republican legislators may feel
beholden to Trump. Some of them might conclude they’re finished if they do not
do his bidding. These legislators might — might — decide to ignore the popular
vote, perhaps by declaring the mail-in ballots invalid, even in the absence of
a hint of voter fraud, and thus install a slate of Trump electors, claiming he
won with the “legal” popular vote. The Electoral College votes Dec. 14 to
choose officially the next president.
This potential maneuver is preposterous
and vile. Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania all have Democratic governors,
who would try to veto or block such a move. The attorney general of
Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, has already declared that
for the State Legislature “there is no legal mechanism to act alone and appoint
electors. None.”
Or, in theory, legislatures could try
to change the law overnight, if enough Republicans have taken leave of their
consciences and concluded American democracy is expendable. I will not attempt
to describe the mess that could ensue in Congress, except to say that it would
be murky, and there’s a 6-to-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
This is a column I never thought I
would write. But better to write it than to be blindsided. The world needs an
American democracy restored, rid of its brooding ruler, and led by the man who
won, Joe Biden. End of story.
Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times
since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in
1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen