Note: I wrote most of this newsletter before The Washington Post released audio of President Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State. In the end I kept most of it as is, because: (a) the Bears were playing the Packers; and, (b) you know it won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. Why should we be shocked by Trump saying in private what he says in public?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asked his caucus not to contest the election results. How did that work out for him?
A growing number of Republican lawmakers are joining U.S. President Donald Trump's extraordinary effort to overturn the election, pledging to reject the results when Congress meets next week to count the Electoral College votes and certify President-elect Joe Biden's win.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on Saturday announced a coalition of 11 senators and senators-elect who have been enlisted for Trump's effort to subvert the will of American voters.
This follows the declaration from Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was the first to buck Senate leadership by saying he would join with House Republicans in objecting to the state tallies during Wednesday's joint session of Congress.
Trump's refusal to accept his defeat is tearing the party apart as Republicans are forced to make consequential choices that will set the contours of the post-Trump era. Hawley and Cruz are both among potential 2024 presidential contenders.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had urged his party not to try to overturn what nonpartisan election officials have concluded was a free and fair vote.
As of this writing, that’s twelve Republican Senators out of 48 - a full 25% of the caucus - that has chosen to defy their leader. Josh Hawley opened the floodgates. At this point, I’d bet on at least half of the GOP Senate caucus choosing Trump over McConnell - including one or two who have already promised not to do so.
And that’s on top of an estimated 140 Republican House members - about 2/3 of the House caucus - pledging to contest the election results.
None of this should work. Democrats still hold an absolute (though reduced) majority in the House, and Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski alone would be enough to have the Electoral College results accepted by the Senate. (The Georgia seats should still be vacant on January 6, as runoff election results are still being tabulated.)
But we’ve already come a lot further than we thought possible. After Trump lost the Presidential election, some Republicans asked what was the harm in letting him blow off some steam. Well, now we know.
And Mitch McConnell, master of the Senate, the all-powerful conqueror who sits atop a throne of skulls, becomes the latest in a long line of very smart peopleᵀᴹ who thought they could ride the Trump tiger, only to be thrown off. Republicans are not scared of crossing him anymore. They are afraid of getting on Trump’s bad side, even after he lost.
Donald Trump is a creature motivated by pure spite, and he will not forget Mitch McConnell and the “mainstream” Republican party - I use sarcastic scare quotes because Trump is now the mainstream of the Republican party - refusing to go along with his deranged fantasies about a stolen election. What are the odds that Cocaine Mitch faces a primary challenger in 2026?
Meanwhile, the President has been very busy letting us know that the pandemic that’s killed over 350,000 Americans - or so theyᵀᴹ want you to think - is just another plot to take him down:
It really is incredible how many people and institutions - the media, the tech companies, Republican Senators, Republican Governors, Republican election officials, Judges appointed by Trump himself, and now the Centers for Disease Control - are all lying to take down Trump. Truly this man is the most persecuted person in the history of the world.
On New Year’s Eve, The New York Times published a truly remarkable article describing Trump’s obstinate refusal to even get his supporters wearing masks. Spoiler alert: it’s all (shakes Magic 8-ball) Jared’s fault.
It was a warm summer Wednesday, Election Day was looming and President Trump was even angrier than usual at the relentless focus on the coronavirus pandemic.
“You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Mr. Trump yelled at Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office on Aug. 19. “I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting.”
Mexico’s record in fighting the virus was hardly one for the United States to emulate. But the president had long seen testing not as a vital way to track and contain the pandemic but as a mechanism for making him look bad by driving up the number of known cases.
And on that day he was especially furious after being informed by Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, that it would be days before the government could give emergency approval to the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment, something Mr. Trump was eager to promote as a personal victory going into the Republican National Convention the following week.
“They’re Democrats! They’re against me!” he said, convinced that the government’s top doctors and scientists were conspiring to undermine him. “They want to wait!”
Mr. Kushner, who along with Hope Hicks, another top adviser, had been trying for months to convince Mr. Trump that masks could be portrayed as the key to regaining freedom to go safely to a restaurant or a sporting event, called embracing mask-wearing a “no-brainer.”
Mr. Kushner had some reason for optimism. Mr. Trump had agreed to wear one not long before for a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, after finding one he believed he looked good in: dark blue, with a presidential seal.
But Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff — backed up by other aides including Stephen Miller — said the politics for Mr. Trump would be devastating.
“The base will revolt,” Mr. Meadows said, adding that he was not sure Mr. Trump could legally make it happen in any case.
That was all Mr. Trump needed to hear. “I’m not doing a mask mandate,” he concluded.
[…]
Alex M. Azar II, the health and human services secretary, briefed the president this fall on a Japanese study documenting the effectiveness of face masks, telling him: “We have the proof. They work.” But the president resisted, criticizing Mr. Kushner for pushing them and again blaming too much testing — an area Mr. Kushner had been helping to oversee — for his problems.
“I’m going to lose,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Kushner during debate preparations. “And it’s going to be your fault, because of the testing.”
With time, mass vaccinations and a more competent administration taking office later this month, the pandemic will subside. And this disgraced ex-President will say this proves it was a hoax all along. And the brainwashed cultists converging on Washington, DC this Wednesday will believe him.
From Found and Explained, an aviation-related YouTube channel I discovered and binge-watched over the holidays, a flashback to when Donald Trump tried running his own airline. Spoiler alert: it was as successful as his casinos, his professional football team, his fake university and his steaks.
If you’re pressed for time, skip to around 5:45, when the video deals with Trump calling out his competitors’ safety records. You’ll never guess what happened next. (Hint: when landing a passenger jet, it helps to have landing gear at the front of the plane.)