The silence hovering over the Republican Party into the second week after Donald Trump’s loss may be working in Washington, but in the rest of the world, it is simply exposing the country’s claim to democracy as a sorry charade.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on November 16, 2020.

OTTAWA—America is losing its lustre as the global beacon of democracy.

It could be difficult to promote democratic principles elsewhere when most senior Republican politicians do not respect it at home.

The parody of the Trump-Biden stalled transition started off as a bit of a joke. Most people thought the Republicans were simply willing to give U.S. President Donald Trump a few days to let the defeat sink in.

But his promotion of the notion of a rigged election is shining a light into the inner workings of the Republican Party.

All senior members of the party are backing the president’s bizarre lie about who won the election.

Four years of Trump’s isolationism may have made a negative mark on the world, but it has not affected his popularity at home.

Like president-elect Joe Biden, Trump increased his own vote, and continues to claim that he won the election, but that officials stole the result by refusing to end the count.

The code of silence hovering over his party into the second week after the loss may be working in Washington but in the rest of the world, it is simply exposing the country’s claim to democracy as a sorry charade.

The president’s attack on Fox News and his claim of a stolen election has penetrated his base, with supporters across the country brandishing signs demanding that officials “stop the steal.”

Trump continues to claim illegality in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia even when their Republican officials deny any illegitimacy.

Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt was adamant that there was no skullduggery in his city. He was immediately attacked by name, by the president.

But Schmidt did not back down. Instead he publicly questioned why people would so easily swallow lies about a fraudulent election.

Local Republicans like Schmidt and those who are distant from Washington seem the most likely to throw cold water on Trump’s illegality claims.

Former U.S. president George W. Bush congratulated Biden on his victory shortly after the result was called by several media organizations on Nov. 7.

But the silence on Capitol Hill was deafening. Mitch McConnell led the revisionism charge, claiming that Trump had every reason to refuse to concede as long as the results had not been certified.

But almost two weeks after the vote, courts have found zero evidence of widespread fraud. Last week, the Republican lieutenant-governor of Texas offered a million-dollar reward for any evidence of malfeasance. This is the same politician who said grandparents were willing to die during the pandemic in support of the economy.

The Georgia recount is automatic since the margin of victory is less than 0.5 per cent. But with 99 per cent of the vote in, Biden was ahead on Nov. 12 by 14,005 votes even though the vote differential was only 0.3 per cent.

In my own political life, I underwent a recount in my first provincial election which was lost by 15 votes. In those days, a difference of less than 25 votes resulted in a judicial recount. In the end, I ended up gaining one vote in the recount, legally losing the election by 14 votes.

The chance of turning thousands of votes around in Georgia is virtually impossible.

Back in 2000, the difference in the American presidential vote in Florida was little more than 500 votes. The finalized counting process took more than a month, and ultimately did not displace the initial victor, George W. Bush.

But Trump is not about to let the facts stand in the way of a good lie. And his legion of supporters in the Republican Party are listening.

Polls show that 70 per cent of Republicans now doubt the outcome of the election. That number has doubled since election night. The vast majority of them refuse to concede that the Democratic U.S. president-elect was chosen by the majority of voters and the electoral college.

The truth may be starting to set in. At press time, only four Senators from the Republican Party had broken with the majority by tweeting their congratulations to president-elect Biden. They included independent-minded Susan Collins and Trump enemy Mitt Romney.

Within the White House, some are already speculating about the pardon process, which is one of the last acts of an outgoing president.

Trump is allegedly considering a list of pardons, including one for Jared Kushner’s father, a billionaire convicted of witness tampering, illegal election contributions and tax evasion. Trump is also considering an unprecedented self-pardon.

That should not surprise.

Nothing about the Trump presidency has followed precedent.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Donald Trump’s failings and disgraces as president haven’t shaken his core supporters, but they likely lost him his second term.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on November 9, 2020.

OTTAWA—Revenge is a dish best served cold. Deceased Congressional leaders John McCain and John Lewis may have delivered that dish in spades from their graves.

Days into the American presidential vote count, Arizona and Georgia are among the key states, holding the balance of power in the critical road to 270 electoral college votes needed for victory.

Both states witnessed the deaths of their beloved native sons met with insult and ignominy by U.S. President Donald Trump. The state of Arizona was in the Trump column in the last election, but that was before the president spewed some of his standard anti-military vitriol, claiming that McCain was no war hero because he was captured in theatre. Ditto for Georgia, before the president boycotted the Lewis state funeral, which was attended by all other living presidents.

McCain’s family was so outraged by the slurs against the respected Republican that they campaigned against Trump in this election. But the insults directed towards icons like McCain and Lewis mattered little to most Republicans.

With the record-breaking turnout in this race, Trump managed to score more than five million more votes than Republican ballots cast in 2016. To those of us watching this election from afar, that solid support seems incomprehensible. How could anyone vote for a president who boycotted the funeral of America’s senior congressional African American? It is shocking to the world that Trump was not thrown out of office in shame, considering the chaos that has reigned during his term in office.

On COVID-19 alone, his incompetence, and the absence of a national strategy, has led to the deaths of more than 234,000 people. But his disastrous handling of the COVID pandemic does not seem to have had any influence on his popularity amongst diehard supporters.

In one CNN interview, a woman whose whole family had fallen ill from COVID was supporting Trump and did not believe he had any responsibility for the viral spread in the United States. She said she was voting for him because of his terrific success in foreign policy, and specifically cited the signing of a trade agreement with Israel.

With the massive support he received during the election, it may not have been enough to win, but he will definitely remain a player on the American political stage. Rumour has it that if Trump loses the election, which seems increasingly likely, he is so angry with Fox News that he will revive a 2016 plan to launch his own television station.

Trump was also running an irate twitter rant against Fox News, because of its decision to call Arizona as a winner for the Democrats just a few hours after the polls closed. The enraged president demanded officials stop counting votes in Democratic-leaning states and speed up voting where he was winning.

Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani was also piling on with unproven conspiracy theories. The most bizarre was a Trump tweet quickly hidden by the political censor rules on twitter. Without a scintilla of evidence, Trump ginned up his followers with the notion that his win was being stolen by underhanded Democratic shenanigans. His supporters stormed a number of independent election counting centres, some toting arms and threatening employees as they entered or left the election premises. Protesters were acting on his bizarre tweet in the early morning hours after the polls closed, claiming he won the election and the only thing officials needed to do was to stop counting votes.

Trump was insisting on foul play on the counting front, but even Twitter political censors did not believe him. The tweet was blocked after Trump claimed, “Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key states, in almost all instances Democrat run and controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE.”

It is only strange for a political neophyte. In elections around the world, polling divisions in crowded urban areas come in later and with larger numbers. It takes longer to count them. Add mail-in ballots to the mix and you can anticipate more delays. Some states did not even start counting the millions of mail-in ballots until the evening of the election. Even though this is a federal election, each state has its own voting system.

The claim that votes are being stolen is false. The principle that every vote counts is at the core of democracy. But Trump doesn’t care. He will be a one-term wonder who prefers working with dictators.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.