Speaking to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, Tom Donilon described meeting daily with President George W. Bush's staff to ensure a seamless transition for the safety and security of the country. Trump has obviously opted for a different approach.
"It's not a well-grounded effort, legal effort," Donilan said of the unprecedented legal challenge. "Nothing like it has ever been seen. Here are the facts, here is what I'm worried about from a national perspective: One is, this all conspires to slow down the transition. And there's now some talk about even slowing down confirmations, hearings and confirmations going into next year which will delay putting in place permanent officials in charge of the federal government."
It's unclear if that is the plan, to slow or stop Biden from getting off the ground, but doing so puts the country at risk. Donilan called it a mistake, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic crisis and a series of international situations Donilan called "challenging."
"So, slowing down the transition is really not in the interests of the United States government," he continued. "Other specific things that have been done during the course of this effort like firing Chris Krebs at DHS, the person in the United States government in charge of cybersecurity, was really kind of a reckless thing to do in the midst of a transition. The second thing is, it really does undermine faith in the electoral process in the United States."
Donilan, who's worked under three presidents in his career, said that presidents are mere "stewards of democracy." He explained that everyone should be celebrating that we made it through an election without foreign interference.
"As you and I talk today, Andrea, all of the states have certified their electors and they'll be counted on Monday," Donilan explained. "The last thing that's important, and you and I have watched transitions in this country for a long time, and that is that the peaceful transfer of power is a linchpin of our democracy. For the president to not participate in that is really damaging for the democracy. You and I have witnessed these transfers in very difficult circumstances where people lost difficult campaigns, in 1980, in 1992, in 2000. But the majesty of watching that transfer peacefully, of watching the former president and the incoming president coming together to celebrate the democracy, for that to be missing is really damaging, don't you think?"
Mitchell noted that in the next 60 days, Iran will ramp up its nuclear weapons program, which was halted by a treaty that Trump broke.
"There's a world full of these situations that are going to be challenging for the United States," Donilan said, citing the coronavirus crisis. "They come out of a disruptive period under President Trump. And those challenges need to be met by people who are in their seats, running these departments as soon as possible. One of the challenges we've had to date, of course, as you all have covered on NBC, MSNBC, a lot has been the instability in the leadership of these organizations. It's important to get strong, stable leadership."
Watch the interview below:
