President Trump (DJT) did everything he could to berate President-elect Joe Biden—to create the impression he was not up to the job. Now he is doing his best to cause his supporters to believe Biden will be an illegitimate President. Polls show (while one can certainly wonder if they are accurate) that 80% of Republicans think Biden’s election was due to fraud. I hope it is not accurate.
Perhaps DJT thinks this is a golf match in which the other side yields to his presence in fear of not being asked back to Mar-a-Lago. This is decidedly not sport. This is about the strength or weakness of our country.
Most Republican position holders (not leaders) know this is simply raw politics taken to the edge regardless of the consequences. Fear stalks their mind. Ironically Republicans had a rather good election, down ballot as they say. DJT, not the Republican Party, was the loser.
I wonder if Republicans consider their success in Congressional and State elections due to fraud. If Democrats were manipulating voting machines they made an unappealing hash of it.
DJT began chanting fraud several months out from the election. Also there were numerous warnings in all media about the potential of one of our enemies hacking into our voting machines.
Appropriately the United States government concentrated on election security and by all accounts did a good job. Christopher Krebs was in charge and that is where the story gets strange.
Krebs was serving as the first director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). He was originally sworn in on June 15, 2018 as the Under Secretary for the predecessor of CISA, the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD). Mr. Krebs was nominated for that position by DJT in February 2018.
So let’s see if I’ve got that right. DJT appointed a leader who did such a good job that he got fired because he reported that the Administration had protected our elections.
My hope. We, all Americans, recognize that our patriotism comes with obligations and one obligation is to unify after even close elections.
Final word. Secretaries of State, for each of the States, should get together on a bipartisan basis and revisit the likelihood of voting changes given mail and electronic options for future elections. Securing a national pattern that can be spelled out in advance would at least help avoid the mess we are in at the present.
Final thought: My Dad, in no uncertain terms, made clear what the phrase “sore loser” means.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
Reza Jafari says
Thank you Al for your words of wisdom. What DJT is doing is utterly non-patriotic, what DJT is doing is against our democracy and value that we are so proud of. It is a very sad day to see the Republican Leadership is following DJT’s non-patriotic perspective and are silent about our democracy. This is a very sad time for all of us Americans.