Opinion

Has Donald Trump, like Hamlet, put "antic disposition on," pretending to be crazy because it serves his political purposes? Or is he really bonkers, insisting that he has won an election that is completely out of reach?

The reality should have set in long ago. All of the swing states that would have been necessary for Trump to prevail in the Electoral College have certified Biden's victory. The transition to the administration of President Elect Biden has begun.

Donald Trump isn't about to concede the presidential election to Joe Biden. Not now, and seemingly, not ever.

Anyone who has followed Trump closely knows two things about the man that make it relatively easy to anticipate his next move. The first is that, ideologically, Trump is a fascist who has no regard for democracy. The second is that, psychologically, he is a malignant narcissist who suffers from a toxic stew of narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality disorder and sadism. As a result, it is virtually impossible for him to acknowledge, much less accept, failure.

On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump unleashed a wave of pardons and grants of clemency for 20 individuals. Among those included in this round were two of the president's early supporters in Congress and two figures convicted in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Since the special counsel was appointed specifically to shield the investigation from conflicts of interest with the president, these two pardons, much like the clemency offered to Trump allies Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, undercuts the integrity of Mueller probe.

For years, many liberals have been confused by why so many Donald Trump voters seem unperturbed by all his criming and cheating. To understand Trump's supporters, it's important to understand that they don't believe he's a good person. On the contrary, the appeal of Trump from the beginning was a belief that he's a liar, a cheat, and a crook — but one who would implement his evil-doing skills towards goals Republican voters support, with triggering the liberals and snagging all the government goodies for their tribe at the expense of other Americans at the top of the list.

This article was originally published at Salon

I think the point of wishing someone a happy holiday season is rooted in one of the themes of Christmas—peace on earth and good will toward all humanity. In other words, empathy. It's a simple consideration for people who might not recognize the messiah but who nonetheless enjoy much-deserved downtime during this time of year. Even the most conservative Christian can understand the virtue in "Happy Holidays."

This article was originally published at The Editorial Board

Buried near the end of the 5,593-page law granting new coronavirus relief is a special interest tax favor of the kind that Republican saint Ronald Reagan cut in half when he waged war on the "three-martini lunch"—code for living it up thanks to our tax code.

This new special interest tax break benefit is worth a lot more to business owners than the long-delayed and miserly $600 or smaller checks for most people, the latest evidence of how much the Trump administration and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, favor business over people.

Political Pundits and television talking heads have been speculating widely and wildly about who Donald Trump will pardon before he leaves office on January 20, 2021. Will he pardon Rudy Giuliani? Paul Manafort? Steve Bannon? His children? Himself?

It is customary for an outgoing President to grant 11^th hour pardons, sometimes to surprising recipients. But Donald Trump is anything but customary, and thus that pardon-guessing game offers a goldmine of interesting and in some cases alarming speculation regarding who and why.

One need not dabble in conspiracy theories to ask a simple question today: What should be done about Donald Trump having served as a Russian asset for the past four years?

In the wake of the recently revealed Russian cyberattack on the U.S. -- apparently unprecedented in its danger to national security -- it's time for Congress, the media and the incoming Biden administration to move beyond the question of "if" Trump was helping his overt ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin. The relevant questions are why and how.

Countless political pundits have described the United States as a deeply divided country with two separate realities: a rural Red America that voted to reelect President Donald Trump and consumes Fox News and AM talk radio voraciously, and an urban and suburban Blue America that rejected Trump, made Joe Biden president-elect and is more likely to be consuming the New York Times, MSNBC and CNN. But liberal/progressive pundit Cenk Uygur, in an op-ed published by The Hill on December 21, argues that there are "three tribes" in the United States: (1) "the establishment, (2) "Trumpworld, MAGA Land," and (3) progressives.

Uygur, who hosts "The Young Turks" with fellow liberal/progressive Ana Kasparian, describes "the establishment" as Americans whose "worldview is cemented by the best propaganda the world has ever seen."

For weeks now, Donald Trump's hopes of stealing the 2020 presidential election from the winner, Joe Biden, have been fading. Nonetheless, the dumbest and worst president in American history continued sending out fundraising appeals to his endlessly gullible supporters, giving birth to the theory — to which I, personally, subscribed — that Trump's coup is little more than another one of his many schemes to defraud people. After all, the Trump campaign spent very little on the actual legal efforts to challenge the election and redirected most of the cash into what is likely going to be used as a slush fund for Trump and his family.

And yet, as Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported in the New York Times on Saturday, Trump is deep in talks with an increasingly unhinged cast of characters, all of whom believe there must be a way to steal the election even though the Electoral College made Biden's win official last week. The president invited conspiracy theorists like his former lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn to the White House on Friday to discuss a potential declaration of martial law as a last-ditch effort to force a second vote in some swing states. That suggestion came from the disgraced Flynn, who has been involved in violently oppressive work on behalf of Turkey's authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan

It may seem as if President Donald Trump has done nothing since losing to Joe Biden but watch TV and rage tweet about his stolen election fantasy, however, he's actually been quite busy.

He's reportedly considering a military coup or an executive order to seize the voting machines in swing states that Biden won. He spent a lot of energy pushing Attorney General Bill Barr to pursue some of his wild theories about the alleged election theft and pressed him to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Biden's son Hunter. He's also been engaged in purging the federal government of those he considers disloyal, particularly at the Pentagon, where he has spent the final few weeks of his presidency installing some of his closest collaborators for reasons that remain unclear.

Even for Donald Trump and the Republican Tabernacle Choir of the Senate, this weekend was an all-star level of crazy-making – another in which the White House could ignore a pandemic killing 3,000 Americans a day, widespread misery and an attack on the nation while discussing the possibility of martial law over Trump's election loss.

What saved it was the last-minute, roller-coaster deal in the Congress for a coronavirus aid bill, as ugly a compromise as possible, but an agreement nevertheless. Stand by for the conflicting credits and new discoveries about what actually passes today in the multi-hundred-page bill.

Donald Trump has been abusing the American people for at least four years. The abuse is physical, through Trump and his administration's willfully negligent response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed more than 300,000 Americans. In addition, Trump has encouraged political violence against his perceived enemies, including Democrats, antifascists, Black Lives Matter activists, journalists and others.

The abuse is financial. Trump and the Republican Party have enacted policies — both before and during the coronavirus pandemic — that have severely harmed the economy, worsened social inequality and diverted huge sums of the public's money to the very richest individuals and corporations. Trump and his party's policies have resulted in record unemployment and job losses, rampant hunger and poverty, and millions of Americans living under threat of eviction and homelessness.