Miranda Devine: Donald Trump’s going - but he won’t be gone
Donald Trump and his supporters have every right to feel dudded by the results of the election, and Republicans now have their work cut out to hold on to the Senate, writes Miranda Devine.
Opinion
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The karmic metaphor of Joe Biden limping to his inauguration is not lost on the tens of millions of Americans who believe he stole the election from Donald Trump.
Biden reportedly suffered hairline fractures to his foot while walking his dogs on Sunday and will be wearing a moon boot for weeks.
Even though his minders would not allow the Biden press pool off their bus when he arrived at the hospital for a scan, and blocked the entrance to stop them taking photographs of the hobbling septuagenarian, CNN still managed to publish a piece lauding his “transparency” in contrast to Trump.
Now that really is a laugh. If anything, Trump’s mistake was an overabundance of transparency with a hostile media.
But Biden’s injury is a timely reminder that, at 78, he will be the oldest ever American president, older even than Ronald Reagan was when he left office after eight years.
While the so-called president elect is keeping largely out of sight, much as he did through his odd campaign, the current president has not given up his quest to overturn an election he asserts was “rigged”.
In his first interview since the election Donald Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo by phone that he had been cheated of his rightful victory.
“This election was a total fraud,” he said. “We won the election easily.”
According to a Rasmussen poll, 75 per cent of Republicans agree, and even 30 per cent of Democrats believe it’s “very likely” that Biden’s win was fishy.
Overall, 47 per cent of the country believes the election was illegitimate.
But as two more battleground states, Arizona and Wisconsin, certified their elections this week, lawsuits launched by Trump and his allies keep failing and time is running out to raise a case in the Supreme Court before the December 14 deadline when electors meet to anoint the president.
Other constitutionally valid pathways have been suggested, including the intervention of Republican state legislatures, but they would be unorthodox and violently opposed,
In the end, the pandemic probably cost Trump a romping election victory in more ways than one.
Democratic machines in swing state cities they control, such as Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, used the pandemic as cover to change election rules to suit themselves, effectively allowing them to ballot harvest with industrial efficiency.
Flush with $400 million from Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, activists took Obama-esque “community organising” to the limit, staging a maximum turnout operation for Biden over the weeks absentee voting was extended.
Aided by alleged instances of fraud and voting irregularities — from signature verification failures to discarded Trump ballots found in rivers — Biden squeaked to victory by 80,000 votes in crucial swing states.
For all the criticism of Trump refusing to concede immediately, he has every right to ask the courts to invalidate illegitimate votes and the MAGA crowd does not want him to give up without a fight. His decision to contest results will be worthwhile if it stops Democrats gaining unfair advantage in future.
After all, there’s more evidence that Biden stole this election from Trump than there ever was that Trump stole the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Yet for three years the Trump presidency was crippled by the conspiracy theory that he was Russian agent who only won because Vladimir Putin rigged the election.
As one Trump-supporting former NYPD detective told me, he wants Trump to continue the fight because: “I am an American combat veteran, and surrender is not in my psyche or my creed.
“So much has gone by without accountability: [Obama era scandals] Fast & Furious, Benghazi and Hillary’s server, the corruption in the FBI and the Department of Justice and the Republicans just let it happen.
“This election is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Someone has to be held accountable.”
Behind the scenes, those close to Trump say he has accepted the inevitable. Asked by reporters last week if he would leave the White House on Inauguration Day if the Electoral College voted for Biden, he replied “Of course I will. And you know that. But I think there will be a lot of things going on between now and January 20.”
Trump’s adult children are encouraging him to run again in 2024.
They also are well aware of the damage done by the Dominion software conspiracy theory promoted initially by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and General Michael Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell, who since has been cut loose from the Trump campaign to run her own legal case.
Whatever the merits of the case, Powell’s lurid claims that communists, Venezuelans, George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Georgia’s Republican Governor were involved in a plot by the voting-software company to switch millions of votes from Trump to Biden, have not been backed up with credible evidence and have overshadowed more credible lawsuits.
In the end, whether Trump decides to run himself in 2024 or play kingmaker to the wide field of Republican contenders muscling up, he will need to help his party win two crucial Senate run-off races in Georgia on January 5.
They will determine which party controls the Senate for the next four years and whether Biden will have an unfettered opportunity to impose radical reforms, from stacking the Supreme Court to abolishing the electoral college and adding new states.
Trump is planning a rally in Georgia this weekend to encourage his supporters to vote for Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
His legacy and continuing influence in the party rests on their success.
Also, as his ally, Senator Lindsay Graham, points out, if Republicans don’t control hold the Senate, they won’t be able to block attempts by vengeful Democrats to prosecute Trump over claims he obstructed justice during the Mueller probe, despite the fact it found no evidence he had colluded with Russia.
Discredited Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann urged the revenge ploy in a column in the New York Times this week.
That’s a powerful personal incentive for Trump to play nice and help his party “do Biden slowly” over the next four years.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph
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