The alliance between anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers is rapidly increasing as they continue their efforts to spread massive amounts of disturbing misinformation amid the pandemic. One glaring example centers around one incident that occurred last week.
On Monday, Larry Cook, the founder of the "Stop Mandatory Vaccination" movement took to Facebook in his final Facebook Live video before the group was removed to warn that vaccines were a plot "to literally enslave every human on the planet," In the video, Cook also included the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA in the upper left corner and the QAnon logo in the upper right corner.
"The purpose of vaccination is to literally slaughter the population and dumb everyone down and render them helpless," Cook said. "It is a global plan to literally enslave every human on the planet."
As he spoke, comments poured in from viewers who expressed gratitude for the "truth" and "awakening" he shared in his video. Like Cook, other anti-vaxxers including David Wolfe along with Ty and Charlene Bollinger have all begun to expose their large followings to the QAnon rhetoric.
Laura Muhl, one of Instagram's most popular anti-vax influencers has also shared relatively dangerous claim insisting the government "engineered" many of the problems currently plaguing the United States. In a meme, she criticized the media with a comparison of covering up the so-called "rigged election" to an attempt to cover up "the truth about vaccines."
"The virus is engineered. The pandemic is engineered. The second wave is engineered. The need for a vaccine is engineered," said the mother of five.
Now, the anti-vaccination pushback and in misinformation rapidly circulating on social media has accelerated with groups joining forces with QAnon. The result is accelerating the effort to discredit science and the integrity of public health.
Two comedians Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler (aka “The Good Liars”) purchased DonaldJTrump2024.com and set it up to mock President Trump for refusing to concede the election, planning a 2024 re-run, and ripping off his followers.
The site, which looks almost identical to Trump’s actual website, DonaldJTrump.com, calls Trump a “loser” six times and has a fictional quote from Trump stating, “I lost the 2020 election.” It also has a banner that says “Click here to donate to a PAC that has nothing to do with my legal defense team.”
The banner refers to the fact that while Trump has been begging his supporters to donate to his so-called “Official Election Defense Fund” in hopes of overturning the election in the courts, the legal fine print on his request for money says that if anyone donates less than $8,000, the money won’t go to his legal fights at all but will instead go to the Republican National Committee or “Save America,” a Trump leadership PAC (political action committee), according to Reuters.
The comedians wrote to Trump in a November 24 tweet, “Hey @realDonaldTrump we’ll give you DonaldJTrump2024.com if you tweet ‘My name is Donald Trump and I lost the 2020 election by A LOT. I am a loser. SAD!”.
In an editorial published by The Bulwark, Section 1985(3) of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 is being highlighted as a possible form of legal consequence for Trump's actions.
The law, passed by Congress, aimed to enforce consequences for voter suppression and intimidation giving voters the right to sue those "who, motivated by race, conspire...for the purpose of preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any State...from giving... to all persons within such State... the equal protection of the laws; or... to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy... in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President."
While the publication specifies that Trump's post-election legal challenges, alone, would not be enough to support Section 1985(3) claims, actions taken by the Trump campaign "'[hinder] the constituted authorities' of the states in order to disqualify presidential votes in disproportionately Black jurisdictions such as Philadelphia (42.3 percent Black), Detroit (78.6 percent), Atlanta (51.8 percent), and Milwaukee (38.8 percent). Black voters in these jurisdictions can bring lawsuit."
The publication outlined the process of voter certification. After all votes are counted and resolutions have been reached for court challenges, state and local officials are required to certify votes. Any form of interference, at this point, can likely be classified as a form of interference.
The state of Michigan was used an example of interference as it was noted that the Trump campaign has gone "beyond 'hindering' to 'intimidation' and 'threat.'"
A Republican member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially advocated denying certification for Detroit ballots, but not those from whiter cities. Both Republican members then voted against certification (deadlocking the board), before later reversing themselves. Then, after a call from President Trump, they sought to rescind their votes to certify. Next, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Michigan GOP Chair Laura Cox asked to delay state certification for 14 days, which would bump up against the December 7 statutory certification deadline. There have also been requests to disqualify huge numbers of Wisconsin ballots and do a second Georgia recount.
Defendants accused of violating Section 1985(3) typically face "joint and several liability for damages," which means Trump could, subsequently be held liable for his own actions and the actions of his campaign.
As President Donald Trump leaves office in January 2021, he could be faced with a barrage of criminal investigations into his personal and business finances. But could Trump avoid the possibility of jail time by using his presidential powers before leaving office? There are debates about how that could play out. Although it would be a relatively bizarre occurrence, it is no secret that strange things have happened in the world of Trumpism.
According to Newsweek, there is growing speculation about Trump possibly pardoning himself before leaving office. However, the seemingly rare occurrence has inspired many debates because many are wondering if the president has the power to self-pardon. Since no precedent exists, the possibility has become a fascinating legal discussion. There are also questions about whether or not a self-pardon could be overturned. Does it signal an admission of guilt?
CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp discussed the matter during a segment that aired on Thursday. She suggested that maybe it is time to consider possible changes to the laws surrounding presidential pardoning powers. She also mulled over how it would look if Trump were to pardon himself.
"If the president has designs on running again for president, this would certainly imperil that, and I would think encourage other justice departments to really look at what he had done while in office if he is tacitly admitting he needed to be pardoned for stuff," Cupp said.
"I'm not sure this is constitutional or legal, but it seems pretty clear it would be inadvisable for him to do that."
Asha Rangappa, a lawyer and senior lecturer at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs who also serves as a CNN commentator, also weighed in with a similar stance. She noted how "risky" a self-pardon could be for Trump as she noted that the future Department of Justice should consider challenging that particular action if the outgoing president chooses to do so.
She said, "I think that it would be incumbent on a future Department of Justice to try to challenge that, because you don't want that to be the precedent, or at least you want the Supreme Court to clarify the bounds of this."
Although Trump has not alluded to making this decision yet, there was speculation he would pardon former national security advisor Michael Flynn—and, he did.
More than 80 million Americans helped the country dodge the bullet of a potential second Trump term, but has one Trump presidency been enough of a lesson for the American people?
An editorial published by USA Today stresses the importance of remaining vigilant even during the post-Trump era. He warned that the American people must never lose sight of their responsibility to learn how Trump's behavior was allowed for an entire four years. There should also be accountability for the administrative officials who waged war on America's democracy.
The favorable outcome of the election does not relieve us from the obligation to try to determine how we allowed the outrageousness of the past four years to take place — how we let our basic institutions of government and society itself to be shaken to a frightful degree. Public accountability, the legislative power of the purse, judicial independence, the United States Department of Justice's commitment to the law, a respect for a free press, three equal independent branches of government — all being challenged by an administration bent on creating chaos throwing aside democratic norms.
He also noted how Trump's influence should ultimately be viewed as a worst-case scenario in which Americans remember that they were taken to "the very edge of the precipice" and "spent four years on that path should be a source of concern." More disturbing, the fact that more than 70 million Americans actually did support Trump signals that the country is not out of the woods yet.
With the possibility of a looming 2024 presidential run for Trump, it is imperative that Americans heed the warnings that came with Trump's presidency to avoid repeating history in the very near future. The author concluded with an explanation to support his warning:
"The basic need for structure and certainty in people's lives during rapidly changing, tumultuous times is being satisfied for some by providing simple answers to complicated questions and plausible-sounding solutions for seemingly intractable problems," he said. Never mind that the answers and solutions Donald Trump provided, though easily understood and uncomplicated, are wrong."
This story is part of a series on good things that happened in 2020. Read them all here."They say I'm complicit, I'm the same like him, I support him, I don't say enough, I don't do enough where I am," I heard First Lady Melania Trump complaining in an audio clip recorded surreptitiously by her former confidant and adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff in the summer of 2018. The clip was then released on October 1, 2020, in support of Wolkoff's tell-all book, which I will not read.
"I'm working like a . . . ass, my ass off on the Christmas stuff," Melania whinged as Wolkoff murmured supportively and the world held its breath on like a . . . like a . . . wherewas that sentence heading before it swerved? "Who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration, but I need to do it, right?"
It was an experience so flavored with delirium—and I don't say that lightly after the last five years—that I had to play it again and again to make sure I was awake, alive, not feverish, and indeed hearing the first lady of the United States say "who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration" on tape. (Not, to be clear, because I think any first partner should have to give a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration if they don't want to! But if you're going to crap on White House tradition while living in it, you should at least be doing something more worthwhile instead, and complaining about magazine profiles doesn't count.)
Why is hearing Melania dump on Christmas something good that happened in 2020? By any normal yardstick, it's an ugly moment! And it's an ugly moment quickly overshadowed—just hours later, in fact—by President Donald Trump announcing that he and Melania had tested positive for COVID-19. But this grotesque little blurt of selfish, petty grievance is worth taking a beat to appreciate for what it is: the final crack in the first lady's carefully applied veneer of ambivalence, exposing her once and for all as just another Trump, with a rotting sack of writhing worms for a heart and a knockoff Fabergé egg rattling in her skull where a brain might normally be.
And so the final death rattles of #FreeMelania finally stilled, and in their place a recording of the first lady going on to mock the unfathomable pain and trauma of children separated from their parents at the border by her husband's henchmen's orders. "Give me a fucking break," she snarled, then segued into a common lie about Barack Obama — a Trump dinner table staple, I'm sure. "Where they were saying anything when Obama did that?" (They weren't saying anything because Obama-era border policies separated children when they couldn't prove they were with their legal guardians or there were concerns for their safety, not as a strategy to terrorize migrants, but hey, someone's been paying attention to all of that Fox News blaring from her husband's distant bedroom.)
That Melania can't grasp the spiritual connection between the ritual act of giving a fuck about Christmas and her squandered opportunity to give a fuck about the children and parents terrorized by her husband's administration told us the last thing we ever need to know about her in one authoritative audio clip.
To paraphrase an overused and misattributed phrase, better for your inevitable lifestyle brand comeback efforts to keep your mouth shut and have them wonder if you're really a Trump than to open it and remove all doubt. But we are better off knowing for sure who Melania is and what she stands for. Now that her character is defined with hard proof, let this be our final memory of Melania Trump's QVC Jackie O cosplay as she marches off, God willing, into the Mar-a-Lago sunset for good.
Trump has announced his coup in public, which is a major reason why most people are not taking it seriously.
The president has repeatedly stated that the 2020 presidential election is illegitimate, and should be disregarded because he is not the winner. Given that he is a compulsive liar, on that one matter Trump has been remarkably consistent. Moreover, he signaled as early as 2016 his intent to engage in a coup, and other extralegal or illegal efforts to subvert any election where he does not win.
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than 6 million votes, and has also received 306 votes to Trump's 232 in the Electoral College. Both outcomes are a mandate from the American people that the Age of Trump is over and its leader should be left on the ash-heap of history, a nightmare to be awakened from.
In response, Trump's agents and followers are staging public protests, filing lawsuits on Trump's behalf claiming that he lost because of "voter fraud," "fake ballots" and other conspiracies, They have threatened violence and an "uprising" against Biden and the Democrats. Trump has not conceded defeat and under legal pressure is now only begrudgingly offering assistance in the transition of power. He is creating an overall environment of political instability, putting his most stalwart loyalists in key national security positions. As befits a political strongman and neofascist, Trump continues punishing the American people by further damaging the nation's economy and literally killing thousands of people each day through a campaign of negligence and sabotage in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
It is impossible not to think, in this in-between moment, of Antonio Gramsci: "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." Something is dying, but we do not yet know what. Is it the basic idea of majority rule or is it the most coherent attempt to destroy that idea since the secession of the Confederacy? Something is trying to be born, but we cannot yet say what it is either. Is it an American version of the "managed democracy" or "electoral autocracy" that is the most rapidly expanding political form around the world? Or is it a radically renewed republic that can finally deal with the unfinished business of its history? The old is in a state of suspended animation; the new stands at a threshold it cannot yet cross. …
If Trump is eventually removed from the Oval Office, the study of revenge and immortal hate, not sober self-criticism, will be the response in Trumpworld. There will be no chastening, just a further injection of resentment and conspiracy-mongering.
This is zombie politics — the life-after-death of a former conservative party. And as Gothic stories tell us, it is very hard to kill the undead. One half of a two-party system has passed over into a post-democratic state.
In response to these events, the American mainstream news media and the commentariat, for the most part, are continuing with the same errors in analysis and narrative that helped to elect Trump in 2016 and then normalized his assaults on democracy and the rule of law for the next four years.
They are mocking Trump's defeats in the courts and describing them as though they are sporting events with a running tally of wins and losses. It is assumed to be a fait accompli that Biden is taking office in January. Trump is said to be "flailing" and "throwing tantrums"; and his behavior is "pathetic" and "embarrassing." Trump's coup attempt is "disorganized," as are his supporters with their supposed "low morale."
The possibility that Trump and his agents could find some way to alter the vote count and the assigned electors in key states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan is treated as an absurdity: "The law" and "the courts" would never allow such an outcome.
In reality, Donald Trump, his Republican Party and their allies are playing a different game, one entirely outside of "normal politics" and the "folk theories of democracy" that the Fourth Estate and many other political elites worship like a religion.
The tragic thing which you do not understand — which you cannot understand — is that you've already lost. You cannot know exactly what — that's the nature of chaos — but know this. You will lose more than you can bear.
We lost our children, playing at church. We lost our friends, sitting down to brunch. Muslims lost their dignity and rights. Your Republicans have set forces into play they cannot possibly understand and certainly cannot control. And they don't even want to. To them, chaos is a ladder. …
What I can tell you — what anyone who's experienced this can tell you — is that it's going to be bad. I didn't know that churches and hotels would blow up on Easter Sunday, but I know now. I'm trying to tell you in advance. You've opened up a Pandora's box of instability. All kinds of demons come out.
I have lived through a coup. It felt like what you're feeling now. Like watching something stupid and just waiting for it to go away. But it doesn't go away. You can forget about it, but it doesn't go away.
There's a ticking bomb at the heart of your democracy now. Your government, the very idea of governance is fatally wounded. Chaos has been planted at its heart. I don't know what this chaos will grow into, but I can promise you this. It won't be good.
American democracy is very sick. The jubilance and celebration at Trump's apparent defeat on Election Day were highly premature. Biden's victory was a drug that temporarily masked the pain of a democracy in critical condition. The patient can live "normally" until the high of the drug wears off. The crash will be extreme and horrible, almost beyond imagination, because the underlying disease has not been addressed.
On these questions of healing and what comes next after the Age of Trump, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a leading historian of fascism, had this to say in a recent phone conversation:
We are going to need a lot of grassroots education to help people understand what nefarious influence they were under with Trump. One of the saddest truths is that these men despise the people who love them. They disdain them for giving them their power. Many of us have been amazed that with the pandemic it's been very obvious he doesn't care if they die. He truly doesn't care if you live or die. Helping people to see that will be important to getting them back to the cause of good government, government that cares about public welfare. That's very different than building bridges to forgive people and saying, "OK, well we'll just put your racism behind us." That's not at all what I advocate.
Ultimately, American neofascism as mainstreamed by Donald Trump and his followers is a slow-acting poison. Trump's coup attempt is one more sign that it is working.
ATLANTA — President Donald Trump’s decision to visit Georgia next week was celebrated as a “Thanksgiving miracle” by the Republican U.S. Senate runoff candidates. But his trip will test how they balance his unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud with their all-out efforts to drive up turnout.Even as U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue push supporters to return to the polls, Trump has continued to falsely insist that the elections are “rigged,” stoking worries from Republicans that the conflicting messages will discourage voter participation. A new federal lawsuit filed by Trum...
Many Never Trump conservatives were hoping that if President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, the GOP would reject Trumpism and return to a more traditional conservatism. Trump lost, and President-elect Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes in addition to defeating Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote. But author Richard North Patterson, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark this week, laments that despite Biden's victory, Trumpism will continue to plague the GOP for the foreseeable future.
Patterson, a former chairman of Common Cause and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, explains, "(Trump) inflicted on us a presidency which was ignorant, cruel, reckless, lawless, divisive and disloyal. Mendacity and bigotry became the mode of communication between America's president and his party's base. Not only did he worsen a deadly pandemic — by immersing an angry and alienated minority in his alternate reality, he is sickening our future."
Trump, Patterson stresses, "did not materialize from the ether," but rather, "rose from a political party bent on thwarting demographic change by subverting the democratic process; a party whose base was addicted to white identity politics, steeped in religious fundamentalism, and suffused with authoritarian cravings — a party which, infected by Trumpism, now spreads the multiple malignancies metastasized by Trump's personal and political pathologies."
The GOP's brand, according to Patterson, is now "white grievance and anxiety," and "racial antagonism" has become a "badge of pride" for Trump and his devotees. Trump, Patterson writes, "comprehends his audience all too well" — and that audience is an angry one.
"For many in the Republican base, he fulfills a psychic longing for an American strongman," Patterson notes. "This will to autocracy as self-defense is supplemented by fundamentalist fanaticism. . . When electoral defeat augurs a religious apocalypse in the minds of evangelicals, democracy itself becomes their enemy."
Patterson describes Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 presidential election results as "banana Republicanism," noting Trump's "spate of bogus lawsuits seeking to invalidate many thousands of ballots in five critical states — particularly those cast by African-Americans in major cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta and Milwaukee."
"One danger has become abundantly clear: far too many elected Republicans are just fine with Trump's anti-democratic moves, or at least would not honor their sworn responsibility to defend the Constitution from his depredations — often because they are simply too terrified of their party's base, and the voracious right-wing media which inflames it," Patterson observes.
Patterson wraps up his article by predicting that Trumpism will dominate the Republican Party long after Trump's presidency ends.
"For the foreseeable future, Trumpism will define the GOP," Patterson warns. "The path to regeneration runs not through reform but, one fears, must proceed from self-destruction. The wait time will be painful for the party — and fateful for the country."
The “team of rivals” was the term historian Doris Kearns Goodwin used to describe US President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. It included three men who had run against Lincoln for the Republican nomination for president in 1860: William Seward (secretary of state), Salmon Chase (treasury secretary) and Edward Bates (attorney general).
Appointing these strong-willed figures could have been disastrous were it not for Lincoln’s personal qualities.
Goodwin describes how Lincoln was willing to acknowledge when policies failed and change direction. He gathered facts on which to base decisions. He sought compromise but took full responsibility for his decisions, respected his colleagues and set an example of dignity. (In all these, he sounds like the antithesis of Donald Trump.)
President-elect Joe Biden has taken a different approach to filling out his cabinet so far. Aside from choosing Kamala Harris as his vice president, he’s looked past his main Democratic rivals for the nomination — Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders — and appointed mainly technical experts with relevant experience and an international outlook.
Biden may have seen these more technocratic appointments as fitting with his less partisan style. It also sends a signal to the world that the US wants to reengage.
Biden may not have filled his cabinet with rivals, but he has also not surrounded himself with clones or an “echo chamber”. He made clear he wanted his cabinet to
tell me what I need to know, not what I want to know.
As secretary of state, he has appointed Antony Blinken. A francophone internationalist, Blinken served as former President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state.
we all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem at first like we have much in common.
The message is a long way from “America first” and the disdain for the rest of the world shown by the Trump administration.
Advocates of free trade and climate change action
As treasury secretary, Biden has appointed Janet Yellen. She was chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014–18 and currently heads the American Economic Association. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz recalled her as one of his brightest students.
It is quite an achievement to be the most famous economist in a family that includes a Nobel Prize winner (her husband George Akerlof).
An advocate of free trade and expert in labour markets, she understands the damage that Trump’s trade wars, especially with China, have done to working Americans.
Being chair of the Federal Reserve also gave Yellen an important role in international organisations, such as the Bank for International Settlements.
John Kerry has been appointed to the new post of climate envoy. He is globally respected as a former secretary of state, and ran unsuccessfully for president himself in 2004.
His appointment signals that the Biden administration recognises the importance of recommitting the US to climate action. Most significantly, Kerry was highly influential in the final week of negotiations of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and signed it for the US the following year with his granddaughter on his lap.
And following four years of Trump’s anti-immigration policies, Biden has selected a Cuban-born immigrant, Alejandro Mayorkas, to lead the Department of Homeland Security. After his nomination, Mayorkas spoke of his desire
to advance our proud history as a country of welcome.
Potential roadblocks in the Senate
Biden has assembled a team with an international outlook that will re-commit the US to supporting international organisations, such as the World Health Organisation, and treaties like the Paris Agreement. He will seek to reform rather than just impede the World Trade Organisation.
But there’s one significant hurdle still looming. If the Democrats can’t gain control of the Senate by winning the two run-off elections in Georgia in early January, the Republican-led chamber will likely aim to block Biden’s aims of resuming a constructive global role.
Optimists have compared Biden to former President Lyndon Johnson (also known as LBJ), who may be able to use his decades of legislative experience to achieve more change than was possible for John F. Kennedy or Obama.
Ron Klain, recently announced as Biden’s chief of staff, once put it well:
LBJ might not have been the wokest, coolest, hippest Democrat, but he’s the person who got the most actual progressive social justice legislation done since FDR […] he knew how to make the Senate work.
The rest of the world will hope Klain is right and that the Senate does not block the program of this promising new cabinet.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) cast doubt on Joe Biden's election win in Georgia, citing the so-called "Kraken" lawsuits as proof, and called for Congress to reject the state's electoral votes.
The Alabama Republican has already vowed not to ratify Biden's victory, urged his colleagues to do the same to ensure a second term for President Donald Trump.
"IMHO, Joe Biden DID NOT win lawful vote majority in Georgia," Brooks tweeted. "Per its right & duty, Congress should reject any Georgia submission of 16 electoral college votes for Joe Biden. That is EXACTLY what I hope to help do."
"See below lawsuit for more! SORDID!" he added, including a link to two lawsuits filed by ousted Trump attorney Sidney Powell.
Those suits, which Powell compared to a mythical sea monster, merely rehash already debunked conspiracy theories and claims rejected by other courts -- with plenty of misspellings.
— (@)
Brooks was widely mocked and condemned for trying to overturn the will of the voters on the flimsiest pretext.
President Donald Trump insisted Joe Biden couldn't have won the election because only 1,000 people watched his Thanksgiving Day address, which was an easily demonstrable lie.
The president cited a report by One America News that claimed Biden got only hundreds of views, although Biden's joint address, "Thankful," with his wife drew 5.1 million views on Twitter, their message to frontline workers drew 1.5 million views and his Thanksgiving address drew more than 1 million views.
A quick search on YouTube reveals the president-elect's address received 87,000 views on his channel alone and similar viewership numbers across other sites that posted his speech, and "Thankful" drew 81,000 views on his channel.
"REPORT: Biden’s Thanksgiving Day Address gets just 1000 views online, a record low," Trump tweeted. "Observers say a candidate with '80,000,000' votes would get many more online viewers. Numbers don’t lie, or add up! @OANN"
— (@)
Other Twitter users relentlessly fact-checked the outgoing president.
You don't have to be overly optimistic about the coming Biden administration to know that we will never see "My Pillow guy" in the White House again. We had to read about the pathetic SOB last week when he and former TV star Ricky Schroeder, of all people, were reported to have put up the $2 million bail to spring teenage Rambo Kyle Rittenhouse from jail, where he was confined after being indicted for homicide in Kenosha, Wisconsin. But I think we can be assured that the Trumpazoid bedding manufacturer has darkened the door of the White House for the last time.
I think we can be assured that we will not see the foreign minister of Russia welcomed into the White House along with the Russian ambassador and given a tour of the Oval Office, along with a smattering of top-secret information that exposes intelligence sources and methods and damages our allies.
If a Saudi prince orders the murder of a Washington Post columnist, the new president of the United States won't be on the phone to him facilitating deals for F-35 fighters and greasing the rails for American companies to get cut-rate oil deals.
The White House press corps, and American journalists in general, will no longer be referred to as "enemies of the state."
President-elect Joe Biden hasn't even taken office and we're already beginning to rid our mouths of the bad taste left by the last four years of Donald Trump's occupation of the White House. He may have been elected in 2016, but he didn't function as a president of the United States as we have long understood the man and the office. He didn't look like a president. He didn't act like a president. He didn't do the job of president. Instead, he frequently spent his mornings in the White House residence calling in to "Fox & Friends" and tweeting out lies about whatever happened to pop into his mind, not bothering to descend to his office in the West Wing until the afternoon. He usually ignored the presidential daily briefing and chose instead to preside over ceremonial occasions like visits by college football champions and impromptu Cabinet meetings, where rather than discussing matters of state, he sat beaming as the members of his Cabinet, a great many of them "acting" secretaries and directors never confirmed by the Senate, fawned over him with obsequious expressions of praise and oaths of fealty.
Joe Biden formally takes office on the steps of the Capitol at noon on Jan. 20 in what will probably be a somewhat truncated inaugural ceremony to allow for COVID restrictions. I think we can look forward to a severely truncated inaugural parade and no crowded inaugural balls in hotel ballrooms.
He hasn't announced his plans for his first day in office, but if I were to guess, I'd bet that President Joe Biden and his team will move directly into the West Wing after the inauguration and begin to execute a long list of reversals of Trump policies and executive orders. He has said that he will immediately sign an order rejoining the Paris climate accords. He will order a repeal of Trump's restrictions on travel from several majority-Muslim countries. He will immediately issue an order reinstating the DACA program, allowing undocumented people brought here as children by their parents to remain in the country. And he will immediately order that the United States rejoins the World Health Organization.
Aides to Biden have said that he plans to revoke the so-called "global gag rule," which prohibits federal funding for overseas organizations that provide access to abortion or information about it. The rule was in effect during the Bush administration, overturned during the Obama years and reinstated by Trump on his first day in office.
Biden is certain to move quickly to order a stronger federal role in managing the COVID crisis. Aides have said that he will sign an order invoking the Defense Production Act, a law dating to the early 1950s which allows the president to order companies to manufacture products necessary for the national defense. Biden's order will affect the manufacture of personal protective equipment and drugs necessary to treat COVID and ensure that supplies are adequate to handle the upsurge in cases that plagues the nation as we move into winter.
Biden has announced that he will issue a new ethics pledge that will impose strong requirements on federal employees serving in his administration. Rather than trying to issue a national mask mandate, Biden is likely to require that masks be worn in all federal buildings and on all forms of interstate public transportation, including buses, trains and airplanes, all of which are subject to federal regulation.
The list of Trump policies Biden has sworn to reverse is a long one and includes environmental and climate regulations that have either been canceled or stripped of their effectiveness under Trump, including an executive order he signed revoking all regulations addressing climate change. Biden will also move to restore lands Trump had removed from national monuments and cancel policies allowing drilling in national parks and other federal lands.
One way the new president could begin to make his mark would be to make a personal tour of all the departments of the federal government that have been stripped of powers and diminished by budget cuts and staffed with incompetent leaders and top management. Biden should start with the Department of State. He and Antony Blinken, whom he designated as secretary of state this week, should within the first week hold a (masked) meeting with State Department professional staff and career diplomats and pledge to restore adequate funding to the department, as well as its rightful place in the management of our international affairs. Biden should make other personal visits to the EPA, the CIA, the Department of Justice and the Pentagon — all the federal departments and agencies that Trump has denigrated and denounced as agents of the so-called "deep state." He should tell them that help isn't just on the way. it's here.
Biden's strategy in dealing with the lack of a formal transition since winning the election has been clever. He simply went along with the business of being the president-elect, first appointing a new coronavirus task force and now announcing the appointments of his new national security team. By personally ignoring Trump and his minions and their desperate attempts to challenge election results in battleground states, he has gradually forced Trump to the sidelines of the national conversation about the future. Biden's message has been, "There's a new president in town," and it has worked. Trump has not been able to dominate the news cycle with his tweets and fulminations, at least in part because Biden has refused to engage him. It's a simple, if brutal equation: When Trump doesn't make news, he doesn't get covered. He's the past. Biden is the future.
Even masked-up and socially distanced and missing large family gatherings at Thanksgiving, we have a lot to be grateful for this year. Trump lost. Biden won. We are moving on as a nation, and a new president will be leading us.
