What will be the aftermath of Donald Trump's coup attempt now playing out as an apparently demented President desperately tries to cling to power after being decisively defeated at the polls?
What will follow, once Rudy Giuliani is returned to whatever cave from which he emerged to make ludicrous claims of election fraud that are intended to overturn the votes of millions of people who voted for President-elect Joe Biden?
What will be the harm done to Biden's presidency of this horrendous gambit that is either designed to actually keep Trump in power, encourage his base so they will support him in an imagined presidential run in 2024, or simply soothe his massive ego battered by his landslide loss?
How many people will die as this continues to fester, without coordination of the pandemic response between Trump administration and Biden?
How is it that the incoming president must send out fundraising emails to American citizens asking for donations to help fund his administration's transition while federal funds for that purpose are being blocked by a Trump-appointed mid-level bureaucrat in an obscure agency in Washington, DC?
Here's part of that email:
The Administrator of the General Services Administration is refusing to sign a document called the ascertainment letter, which recognizes the apparent winner of the election, allows the incoming president-elect's team to begin the process of transition of power, and green-lights the coordination of the government with the incoming team.
This is all because Donald Trump's team would rather stick with partisan politics than do what's right. But there are major consequences to this, including threats to our national security and potentially slowing down our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We want to be clear: the Biden-Harris transition team will continue to steadily move forward. But, without ascertainment, we need to fund the transition ourselves, and that's why we're reaching out to you today.
So, why is it that the Republican leadership in Congress is staying silent, refusing to stop this fiasco? Mitch McConnell and his GOP colleagues -- most of them -- are allowing Trump to try overturning the will of the people, to pursue a strategy that would see Republican-controlled legislatures in states that voted for Biden elect Trump supporters to the Electoral College who presumably would cast their votes for Trump, regardless.
All of these questions are critical, and many will not be answered until events play out and it becomes apparent what the future will hold. But those are not questions that we, the citizens of this country, should even have to contemplate. If such a scenario was allowed to occur, the sanctity of our right to vote would be forever tarnished and the nation would be thrown into a massive Constitutional crisis.
The election is over. We, the people voted. It is time to stop the damage and allow this new president to lead our country. We are in the midst of a horrible pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 250,000 of our fellow citizens, and the new administration must be able to prepare to cope with all of this.
Biden has pointed out that lives are at stake, and he is right. Trump's actions are inexcusable and he deserves to be consigned to the trash heap of history.
And so does Giuliani, who yesterday held a news conference at Republican headquarters in Washington to announce an outlandish, unsupported scheme by Democrats two steal votes, details of which have been thoroughly debunked by fact-checkers.
His hair dye running down his cheeks, Giuliani declared, “We cannot allow these crooks — ’cause that’s what they are — to steal an election from the American people. They elected Donald Trump; they didn’t elect Joe Biden. Joe Biden is in the lead because of the fraudulent ballots, the illegal ballots that were produced and that were allowed to be used after the election was over. Give us an opportunity to prove it in court and we will.”
Part of Giuliani's statement is correct:
“We cannot allow these crooks — ’cause that’s what they are — to steal an election from the American people."