Stop wasting time on Trump’s lawsuits. More nefarious
behavior is afoot.
Opinion by
Columnist
November 12, 2020 at 6:45 a.m. CST
The
post-election news environment — like all political horse-race coverage —
prioritizes tension and conflict over boring reality. This is normally a
ratings gambit, but in the present election environment, it elevates President
Trump’s baseless claims of voting irregularity and unintentionally serves his
(and, perhaps not coincidentally, the Kremlin’s) goal to sow
doubt in the election when there is none. It is time for the media to stop
taking Trump’s claims at face value — or straining to impart some logic for an
exercise that amounts to a temper tantrum. Instead, they should focus more
precisely on the actual damage Trump is doing.
Let’s
begin with Trump’s “right to file lawsuits.” No one has a right to file frivolous, unsupportable and
irrational complaints. That’s how lawyers get sanctioned. Trump’s
lawsuits are not a “long shot”; they have zero chance of success. Biden has won
at least 279 electoral votes (306
with Georgia and Arizona, which have not been called but have President-elect
Joe Biden in the lead). Meanwhile, Biden won by nearly 150,000 votes in
Michigan, more than 50,000 in Pennsylvania and more than 20,000 in Wisconsin.
The
only way to reverse the result is to knock out at the very least Pennsylvania’s
50,000-vote margin — a switch of such magnitude that has never happened in any
election, and for which there is no coherent theory or factual basis. There is
nothing in the realm of reality that would suggest Biden did not win
Pennsylvania and, therefore, the election. (There is nothing to suggest he
didn’t win all the other states called for him either, but let’s make this
simple.) The lawsuits filed by Trump in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have been
laughed out of court and do not even purport to show “fraud.”
Thus,
there are two revisions the media should adopt in their coverage: First, they
should be candid that there is no legitimate legal theory that would change the
result. This entire exercise is, at best, therapy for a loser president and, at
worst, an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections.
Second,
Trump’s refusal to cooperate with the transition process is not the
real danger here. No member of Biden’s team breathlessly awaits the chance to
glean information from his or her counterpart in an administration rife with
unqualified appointees and individuals hostile to the mission of their
department. Do we really think Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency
transition group needs to sit down with the climate-change deniers in Trump’s
administration?
The
media should focus on what is critical, namely the
decapitations of the top leadership of the Pentagon and installation of
unserious, politically extreme conspiratorialists who
should not be trusted with national security matters (including the power to
declassify material, make troop reductions, etc.).
It does
not do justice to the president’s recklessness to call these replacements
“loyalists.” As Foreign Policy magazine points out, “Anthony
Tata, a Trump loyalist, conspiracy theorist, and former Fox News contributor
was appointed to serve in an interim role as the No. 2 official in the
Pentagon’s powerful policy shop after his nomination to the undersecretary role
was withdrawn over conspiratorial and Islamophobic comments.” Just how nutty is
he? “Tata’s nomination for the job foundered over the summer after he faced
criticism from lawmakers for offensive and conspiratorial social media posts,
including falsely claiming that former CIA Director John Brennan ordered the
assassination of Trump via a coded message on social media.”
Similarly,
Kash Patel, former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), has been installed to
serve as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary. Patel is widely
credited with putting together the Nunes memo that mischaracterized charges concerning
the FISA warrant for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. During Trump’s
impeachment, former National Security Council officials Fiona Hill and retired
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman accused Patel of
puffing up his role to feed Trump fodder on Ukraine. Ezra Cohen-Watnick,
assigned to fill the role of undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was
also ensnared for funneling information to Nunes meant to prove the baseless
conspiracy about President Barack Obama “wiretapping” the Trump campaign.
As
Benjamin Wittes from the Lawfare blog put it:
It’s not just that
Defense Secretary Mark Esper is out. It’s also a trio of senior officials
replaced by staffers who have long made news as conspiracy theorists and bomb
throwers. It’s the installation of a former staffer for Rep. Devin Nunes as
general counsel at the National Security Agency over the objection of the
agency head. It’s the perhaps-related threatened declassification of material
related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election over the objections of
the CIA director and the attorney general.
Perhaps
Republican self-proclaimed hawks such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Senate
Intelligence Committee Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) should be pressed to weigh
in and asked their opinion of these appointments — or of a possible quick
withdrawal of all troops from Iraq or Afghanistan.
In
short, there is no threat Trump will overturn the election. The media would do
well to stop giving nuisance suits credence. Trump is not messing up Biden’s
preparation, but he is undermining the legitimacy of our election and
installing frightfully partisan and unqualified figures to serious national
security posts. Let’s focus on that.
