President Donald Trump's administration is taking on the characteristics of a tottering regime -- with its loyalty tests, destabilizing attacks on the military chain of command, a deepening bunker mentality and increasingly delusional claims of political victory.
In response, a visibly confident President-elect Joe Biden is going out of his way to project calm amid the deepening chaos, even as Trump and senior Republicans still refuse to acknowledge the President's defeat in a stunning break with America's democratic traditions.
Biden is taking calls with leaders of the country's top allies and appearing on camera, which reflects the inevitability of his ascent to power. Meanwhile, the President is staying behind closed doors, tweeting in wild block capital letters and unleashing a purge of the Pentagon's civilian leadership in what one current defense official called "dictator moves."
And William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense and Republican senator, told CNN's Don Lemon the administration's conduct is "more akin to a dictatorship than a democracy."
The President-elect is reassuring the American people with a composure granted by an election win that Trump's threadbare legal cases baselessly alleging massive voter fraud have little chance of overturning the will of the voters.
The President-elect on Tuesday consciously avoided escalating a confrontation with Trump, who is withholding the access and funding that incoming presidents normally rely on to stand up their administrations.
But while Trump will remain President until January 20, an unmistakable symbolic transfer of authority is taking place despite Trump's efforts to deny his successor legitimacy.
"We don't see anything that's slowing us down, quite frankly," Biden said.
The President-elect has already crossed the necessary threshold of 270 electoral votes, according to projections from CNN and other major news outlets and has a chance of matching Trump's 2016 total of 306 electoral votes given his leads in Georgia and Arizona.
And more false accusations and conspiracy theories touted by Trump supporters to claim electoral fraud are dissolving, a day after Attorney General William Barr stepped into the political fray to advise prosecutors to probe major fraud.
The Department of Homeland Security meanwhile pushed back on rumors that ballots were cast on behalf of dead people.
But the Trump team only dug itself deeper into a bizarre parallel universe -- one where the President has already secured a second term -- consistent with the embrace of misinformation and alternative facts that has characterized the last four years.
Culled from CNN
Comments