Joe and Jill Biden, soon to be taking the inauguration walk as President and First Lady
Last week, we mentioned four life hacks to help Joe Biden into the White House. Two of the four suggestions were to mention world leaders and business leaders, respectively, who had recognized the results of our presidential election. This brings to mind another, growing list: Republicans who have admitted the reality, or at least the apparent reality, that Biden has defeated Donald Trump. Of course, it’s pathetic that we have to play such mind tricks just to confer legitimacy on Biden’s decisive election victory over Trump. However, as someone once said, “it is what it is.” Therefore, if any Republicans complain to you that the election was somehow “rigged,” the results were somehow “fake,” or that Trump really won, perhaps the best thing to do is merely to show them this growing list:
Trump National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien — when recently asked about cooperating with election winner Biden on a smooth transition, he said, “obviously, things look that way now.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — who stands by Georgia’s election results, says he has found no evidence of voter fraud, and predicts that the recount that he ordered after pressure from the Trump campaign will “affirm” the initial results.
Former President George W. Bush — he is one of a number of Republicans listed below who have recognized Joe Biden as President-elect according to this CNN.com article. According to Bush, “The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”
Karl Rove — even the engineer of many Republican electoral dirty tricks, who at first denied that President Barack Obama had beaten Willard Mitt Romney in Ohio on Election Night 2012, thus clinching reelection, despite Fox News and the rest of the media announcing that Obama had won, accepts that Biden beat Trump in this year’s election.
Governors Mike DeWine, Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker — Governor Baker also called Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud “baseless.”
U.S. Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Willard Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and James Lankford — One or more of these Senators, such as Romney and Sasse, are said to have presidential ambitions, in addition to Governor Hogan sometimes being mentioned in this category. Thus, they may have decided that the political future for themselves and the Republican Party does not lie with Donald Trump, but rather, with some form of political reality.
Former George W. Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer — this was one of the more subtle acknowledgements that Biden had won, but the implication is quite clear:
Why isn’t Biden’s staff holding daily press briefings? Why isn’t the Biden press corps demanding them?? How easy on the guy is the press going to be? The game of softball the MSM is playing with Biden is ridiculous.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 17, 2020
And finally, Donald Trump himself admitted that Joe Biden had beaten him in the election, before Trump realized his mistake and tried to undo it. Sorry, Donnie, no take backs.
Granted, some of these statements from Republicans are in the context of some complaint or another about Biden, the press, the election process or some other scapegoat. Likewise, according to the CNN.com article linked above, there are other Republicans, such as U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham, John Thune and Chuck Grassley, who have not explicitly acknowledged that Biden won the election, but who have called for Biden to receive presidential daily intelligence briefings, or for the Trump administration otherwise to cooperate with the Biden team in the presidential transition process, both of which would only be appropriate for someone who is the recognized President-elect. Thus, you could say that these politicians, some of whom, again, may be seeking to run for president (Graham did so in the 2016 elections), are trying to have it both ways. Nevertheless, the premise in each such case is that Biden won the election, and that’s the part on which we can focus, in order to normalize a result that shouldn’t need normalization, and get our country back on track.
Photo by Anthony Quintano, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/dhlxlY
