Donald Trump’s refusal in his office’s last days darkened America’s winter of illness and death, weakened democracy, hampered the fledgling presidency of Joe Biden, and jeopardized Republican hopes of sticking to the Senate.
The dereliction of duty by the President as a pandemic that has never been worse spiraling out of control is depriving America of its most powerful voice of sorely needed leadership. Sunday, after it emerged that Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has Covid-19, the scale of the crisis with hospitalizations and death rising was underscored further.
The former mayor of New York has been criss-crossing the country, making false accusations that Democrats stole the election, sometimes flouting mask wearing and protocols of social distancing proposed by the government of the President himself. Giuliani’s son Andrew, who works in the White House, tweeted that his father was resting and feeling better after news broke that Giuliani is at Georgetown University Hospital.
On Saturday night, during an untamed rally for two Georgia Senate runoff Republican candidates, Trump brought his wonderful falsehoods about the election to new heights, spending much of his time making false statements that he was somehow beating Biden and promising that he would reverse the election outcome.
In the election, the President accused of “lying, cheating, robbing, stealing” and claimed to have pulled straightforward wins in a series of swing states where he braced a clinical defeat against the new President-elect.
Republican Geoff Duncan, the Lt. Governor of Georgia State issued a warning on Sunday that the President’s “mountains of misinformation” could persuade the GOP voters that January 5 runoff that is meant to determine which party dominates the US Senate as well is completely rigged and that it is not worth turning up to vote.
“I worry that this constant, fanning of the misinformation flames puts us in a negative spot with respect to the January 5 runoff,” Duncan told Jake Tapper of CNN on “State of the Union” Program.
Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler repeatedly declined to comment on whether the elections were rigged in her discourse against her Democratic adversary, Raphael Warnock on Sunday night but said, “Clearly, there were problems in the election.”
Republican Sen. David Perdue declined to turn up to debate his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, in the other Georgia Senate race. On January 5, if Democrats acquire both seats, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris casting decision-making votes, they will be able to pass laws in the 50-50 Senate. It is only necessary for Republicans to hold one seat to maintain a Senate majority that would allow them to block the legislative agenda of Biden and hold up his nominations.
In the final days of his office tenure, the President’s determination to focus on his individual grievances rather than his work has also seen him getting largely sidelined as an important week looms over Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of senators is closing in to finalize a new and long-delayed rescue plan for Covid-19 that would include unemployed aid but no new individual stimulus reviews. Discussions are already in place as politicians face a deadline at the end of the week to agree on a larger budget plan to fend off a government shutdown.
The final days of Trump’s office promise to be as tumultuous as his first. Sources said Sunday, in the latest indication of chaos, that Attorney General William Barr, who irritated the President by contradicting his accusations of widespread voter fraud, was considering leaving before the presidency ended. The New York Times first published the news.
