A sampling of editorial comment on the Cuckoo Coup being attempted by Mango Mussolini.
No one expected President Donald Trump to be as gracious in defeat as was George H.W. Bush in 1992, the last time an incumbent was defeated. And perhaps only the starry-eyed would think Trump might implement a more aggressive pandemic response now that the numbers are surging again.
Even so, in the past couple of weeks, unable to face reality and unwilling to concede his election loss to Joe Biden, Trump has sunk to new levels of depravity and narcissism.
Rather than making the best of the situation, Trump spends his days golfing, concocting plots to overturn the election results, firing top officials who question him, planning how he might remain a kingmaker, and tweeting with the emotional clarity of a toddler left alone in his shopping cart.
But it is a different matter entirely when the president intervenes directly in an effort to persuade state officials to overturn the voting results. This is what Mr. Trump is now doing. Having lost an election by a decisive margin, and then having lost one legal challenge to that result after another, he is now strong-arming local Republicans to simply ignore and override the results.
President Trump has broadened his push to overturn the election outcome and threatened Republicans who challenge his refusal to concede, as looming deadlines for key states to certify their results are set to narrow the path for his legal challenges.
Mr. Trump’s postelection campaign to reverse his loss to President-elect Joe Biden—one without precedent in modern U.S. history—is increasingly showing signs of strain among some Republican lawmakers and governors, while many of the president’s own advisers say they are ready for the campaign to turn the page.
For more than two weeks, prominent Republicans have supported the president’s right to litigate the results. But some are now expressing frustration over an effort they believe has no chance of success and over Mr. Trump’s firing of a cybersecurity official who defended the election’s integrity. Some Trump advisers say they are concerned the continued push risks giving false hope to millions of Mr. Trump’s supporters.
The president’s raging against reality also is putting American lives at risk. The nation is in the grips of a generational economic collapse and shot through with a pandemic that has already killed more than a quarter million Americans and is on track to fell another 70,000 by Inauguration Day. Mr. Trump is refusing to allow the Biden transition team to gain access to national security briefings or details on the government’s pandemic response.
That refusal amounts to gross negligence with American lives, piled atop the gross negligence of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. Dr. Scott Atlas, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Sunday called for Michigan residents to “rise up” against public health measures. The president reportedly hasn’t attended a meeting of that task force in several months.
The greatest damage of Mr. Trump’s recent actions, however, may come in future election seasons. Mr. Trump is establishing a vocabulary of denial to election results. He is training politicians to try to overturn outcomes they don’t like — to actively sabotage democracy.
Pressure's building on Mango Mussolini and his bootlicking minions to cooperate in the transition to the Biden-Harris administration, from Republican aligned groups like the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers and a handful of Republican politicians. Thus far, the bulk of the rotted out party is sticking with Mango Mussolini, a decision that -- in the short term at least -- may cost them one or more of those Senate seats in Georgia. That might be the only positive outcome of this mess.
