Trump is in denial about his defeat — but he is still dangerous | thearticle

Two speeches, two incompatible conceptions of the presidency. On Wednesday, Joe Biden declared that the office of President of the United States was not, as such, partisan. On Thursday,

Donald Trump delivered a 17 minute monologue from the White House, using his office to make wild accusations of “rigged” postal ballots, “fraud and corruption” against his opponents and to

threaten “a lot of litigation”.   At this “press conference” (with few members of the press and no questions permitted) the President also alleged a conspiracy of the pollsters and media to

“suppress” the Republican vote. Several networks cut away from Trump’s remarks. CNN showed the whole thing, but it’s anchorman Wolf Blitzer immediately dismissed his claims as lies. CNN

suggested, moreover, that he had planned this attempt to overturn the result and delegitimise the system all along. And so the claims and counter-claims go on, damaging the good name of

American democracy in the process.   Most of all, however, this denouement has destroyed what was left of Trump’s reputation. His conduct came across not only as unpresidential but as

un-American. Last month, when Trump claimed that Covid-19, from which he was still recovering, was “far less lethal than flu”, I wrote about “the madness of King Donald” here . The

President’s behaviour during the first TV debate demonstrated the same “incessant loquacity” that had been observed in George III during his periods of insanity. Joe Biden’s exasperation led

him to utter his most memorable words of the campaign, when he told the President: “Will you shut up, man!” Trump went on to make further misleading statements about the coronavirus and to

claim that he had been infected by God. Since then the US infection rate has more than doubled to 100,000 a day and Dr Anthony Fauci, the expert on whom Trump himself once used to rely, has

warned that the country “could not possibly be positioned more poorly” to deal with the winter crisis. It is too late for the 230,000 who have already succumbed, but millions more will

contract Covid-19 and tens of thousands more will die before the pandemic denier-in-chief leaves the White House on January 20. That, of course, assumes that Trump will indeed relinquish

office without a last stand. Not only has he yet to concede that he lost the election, but it is increasingly clear that he will never do so. Even when all legal avenues have been exhausted,

it is hard to imagine this President admitting that he lost. Trump will probably spend the rest of his life in denial. Since the election has demonstrated beyond doubt that his support base

has grown dramatically since 2016, a sizeable proportion of the nearly 70 million Americans who voted for him may also believe that election was stolen. Of course, it isn’t only Republicans

who are sore losers. Hillary Clinton was reluctant to concede defeat and conspiracy theories claiming that he used Russian influence to swing the 2016 election have dogged Trump throughout

his term in office. The same reluctance to accept the democratic verdict could be seen in this country after the Brexit referendum. But Trump’s seeming determination to plunge his

compatriots into a maelstrom of recrimination rather than accept defeat is not merely mad and bad, but positively dangerous. The peaceful transition of power from one party to another is a

key part of the very definition of democracy. The violence that convulsed many American cities last summer would be nothing compared to the mayhem that a President gone rogue could unleash.

We must pray that it does not come to this. Biden appealed for calm last night. He already seems more presidential than the President. The irony is that Trump had achieved a much better

result than he had any right to expect. America has rejected him, but it has not rejected the conservative values that his opponents deride as “populism”. The “deplorables” have reasserted

themselves in ways that will constrain not only President-elect Biden but any future Democratic administration. The recent rejection by a large majority of Californians of Proposition 16,

which would have reintroduced affirmative action for minorities, suggests that there are limits to the Left’s appeal even in America’s most liberal state. Even though Trump will join the

unenviable club of presidents who were rejected by the electorate after only one term, he will leave a political legacy on which his fellow Republicans might yet build. If he pursues a

scorched earth policy, however, his name will be more reviled than that of any of his predecessors. His party’s only living former President, George W. Bush, made it clear before the

election that he could not vote for Trump. That was arguably a mistake, because it reduced any restraining influence that he might have wielded to zero. Yet it is still incumbent on Bush and

other elder statesmen, including the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, to prevail on Trump to draw back from the brink.   The President says he wants every legal vote

counted. He presents himself as the champion of law and order. He himself has benefited from due process, not least during the Democrats’ attempt to impeach him. Now the time has come for

the law to take its course. Let the results of each state be litigated if they must. Let Trump have his day in court, the Supreme Court if necessary. But that process must have an end — and

soon. There is a word for litigants who bring cases without merit, lacking serious evidence. That word is “vexatious”. Whether the man we watched on Thursday was deranged or merely

desperate, it was an unedifying and ominous spectacle. His rant resembled the behaviour of an unhinged dictator, such as Bruno Ganz’s depiction of Hitler in the film _Downfall. _Trump risks

becoming a national embarrassment. The sooner he leaves the stage, the better for America and the free world. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to

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