BIDEN
DOESN’T SEEM AT ALL FAZED BY TRUMP ACTING LIKE AN AUTOCRAT
“I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite
frankly,” the president-elect says of the current president refusing to
concede.
BY ERIC LUTZ
NOVEMBER
11, 2020
Trumpworld’s concerted effort to undermine the results of the
2020 election has somewhat tempered the relief that followed Joe Biden’s
victory last week, with the optimism of Saturday giving way to anxiety
that Donald Trump could attempt a coup or at least kneecap his soon-to-be successor. But if
there’s been anything comforting in the last few days as Trump and his allies
assail the democratic process, it’s how unfazed the president-elect has been by
the incumbent’s broadsides. In his public remarks, Biden has not only appeared
unthreatened by Trump’s attacks—he’s seemed to react to each desperate maneuver
with a mixture of amusement and pity.
“I just think it’s an embarrassment, quite
frankly,” Biden said Tuesday of the
president’s ongoing refusal to concede the race, even as the margin between
them grows. “How can I say this tactfully? I think it will not help the
president’s legacy.”
Trump has refused to acknowledge Biden’s
victory, instead lying that his opponents rigged the election with a massive
voter fraud conspiracy. There’s zero proof of all that, of course, but
that hasn’t stopped Republicans from falling in line or remaining silent and
members of his administration like William Barr and Mike
Pompeo from giving credence to his baseless claims.
While their campaign is unlikely to pay off in court, it’s added to longstanding fears that Trump could try
to steal the election to remain in office or delegitimize the electoral results
in the eyes of his supporters. Those fears remain, and are well-founded—the
president’s challenge could inflict significant damage on democracy, and it’ll
only get worse the longer he’s allowed to drag things out.
But there’s been something reassuring—and
effective—in the calm Biden has shown in response. Indeed, there’s a kind of
power in treating the president’s whining as the pathetic sideshow it is.
According to Politico, the president-elect's team regards Trump's efforts as a
“comedy of errors,” and
for good reason. Let us not forget that the effort to overturn the election
results is being led, in part, by Rudy Giuliani, who mounted the
Trump campaign’s most vigorous case against the supposed voter fraud while
standing outside a landscaping office in industrial Philadelphia, with help
from a convicted sex offender and a guy who just
became the latest Trumpworld figure to become infected with COVID. Even if it’s
an attempted coup, it’s a hilariously bumbling one. “We don’t see anything
that’s slowing us down,” Biden said Tuesday.
The refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win has had
tangible effects; the Government Services Agency, for example, has not yet recognized him as the
president-elect, thereby preventing his team from accessing government
resources and impeding his transition process. But Biden and his team have even
brushed away those concerns, saying that the “failure to recognize our win does
not change the dynamics of what we’re able to do.” “We are already beginning
the transition,” Biden said. “We’re well underway.”
What Trump and his allies are doing is,
indeed, alarming. But Biden’s refusal to take the bait helps take some of the
oxygen out of the president’s anti-democratic efforts. The former vice
president campaigned preaching calm and faith in America’s institutions. Trump
may be testing them now, but the fact that Biden’s calm has not wavered has
been comforting. Let’s hope he’s right.
