Trump

By the first week of January 2021, after many Republican lawsuits seeking to prove fraud in some state elections were dismissed by the courts, the WH was in chaos and still looking at options to nullify the election result. A controversial lawyer John Eastman then came to their rescue with a plan on how VP Pence could refuse to certify the election result in Congress. Eastman is associated with the conservative Claremount Institute which has the mission to restore the USA to the values of our Founding Fathers. I interpret that as a desire to accept the content of the Constitution. Eastman wrote a brief memo to be reviewed by Trump and his loyal yes men of the core arguments in his plan. Basically his argument was that Pence should ignore the established precedent of counting electoral votes and just declare certain state votes as unacceptable. It must be noted that Eastman never stated that people had cast illegal votes. His argument was that states had permitted people to vote in ways he viewed to be invalid. For instance, Eastman objected to the use of portable polling places and argued that all votes cast that way should not be counted. He went so far as to claim that a reduction in Arizona’s 29 day before election registration requirement ordered by a federal court should disqualify votes in that state. In other words, he believed that many votes cast by citizens should not be counted and that is really strange for someone claiming to be a strong believer in the Constitution. Of course, he also raised the issue of voter fraud via ballot stuffing and potential manipulation of electronic voting machines. Republican Senators Lee and Graham were asked to read the memo and found it to be inadequate to challenge the election result. But Trump bought in to Eastman’s arguments and met with Pence to convince him to throw out some electoral votes in order to declare no winner and take the decision on the next President to the House of Representatives. There each state would have one vote and since the GOP controlled 26 states, Trump would be declared the winner. Pence remained firm and stated that he lacked the authority to over rule election results submitted by the states. The WH attempted COUP had failed!

Some Trump advisers were able to convince him that his participation in coronvirus briefings is critical since his poll numbers have been sliding since late April. The problem with yesterday’s briefing was that many things said by Trump were things he stated before which actually caused his drop in the polls. Besides, a health update without any medical professionals on the stage, I can’t accept as a serious attempt to update the public. Trump admitted that things will get worse but failed to explain why and offered no solution or plan to combat the existing crisis. After his long hiatus from the briefings, I expected more and I suspect most of the viewers did as well. OK, he stressed that wearing a facial covering should be done but after all of his mixed messaging, how many of his followers will be swayed now to accept them? If we have any hope of containing the virus, we must act quickly in a resolute and efficient manner. It appears that we only have a narrow window to do so!

The President in his daily coronavirus briefings stresses his desire to reopen the economy and having people return to work. There is nothing wrong with that idea but we must realize that if we do it too quickly, the virus may raise its ugly head again. Too many citizens have been hospitalized and too many have died to permit this to happen. The other issue is that the President may in reality not have the power to force state Governors to rescind their stay at home orders. Matter of fact, Governors could extend their stay at home orders and the President could only suggest to them to reconsider such action but has no power to stop them! The best course of action is always the one which saves lifes over pure economic interests. the priority right now should remain on ending the spread of the virus until Medical Professionals give us the all clear to resume normal activities!

About noon today Trump gave us all an in depth view into his mind set. Now that he has been acquitted of the charges leveled against him in the Senate trial, he unleashes his true character once gain. Everyone against him is a criminal, corrupt and evil person and he seeks revenge against them for having the courage to call him out on his undemocratic behavior. His speech was nothing else but a classless rant by a Stable Genius who didn’t see too stable to me. If anyone else was doing such shameful performance, they would drag him off to the rubber room. But now in our new universe his loyal followers applaud his non sense. I know that I am not the only one who doesn’t get what is going on right now!