Our weekly White House Report Card finds President Trump and his allies digging in on their battles in key states to overturn the election results.
Evidence and testimony are finally coming forward suggesting that balloting was not secure in some states and that fraudulent votes were cast. While likely not enough to overturn the election, Trump’s supporters want the cases investigated.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is moving on with his transition and has begun to get involved in the congressional effort to provide more coronavirus aid.
Conservative grader Jed Babbin said that with Biden’s likely inauguration just weeks away, Trump’s “political power is fading fast.” He graded a D-.
Democratic pollster John Zogby noted a string of defeats for Trump in grading another F.
Jed Babbin
Grade D-
President Trump didn’t have a very good week. His lawsuits challenging the election’s results are failing for lack of evidence, his threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act isn’t being taken seriously, and the COVID-19 vaccinations that Pfizer and Moderna have developed are stuck in FDA red tape.
More pro-Trump lawsuits aimed at overturning the election results, by his team of lawyers and others, are failing to make it past the first hurdle for lack of evidence. Attorney General William Barr said this week that while there were election irregularities, there wasn’t proof that sufficient ballots were affected to change the result. That seems to be the final word on the matter, though Trump lawyers want to take their lawsuits up to the Supreme Court. They’d better do it before Dec. 14, when the Electoral College meets.
Barr designated John Durham, U.S. attorney for Connecticut, a “special counsel.” Durham’s investigation into the FBI and the CIA for their abuse of power in investigating Trump and his 2016 campaign, and his 2016-2017 transition, may be protected from termination by the incoming Biden administration. That investigation (and Durham’s leadership of it) can almost certainly be ended regardless of Barr’s order because Durham is an executive branch employee.
Trump’s political power is fading fast. He has repeatedly threatened to veto the NDAA, the bill that each year authorizes Defense Department actions. Trump’s threats are because: (1) the bill requires the renaming of military bases named for Confederate Civil War figures such as Forts Lee, Rucker, Bragg, and Hill; and (2) it lacks language repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that immunizes social media from civil liability. That provision enables Twitter, Facebook, and others to censor conservative writing and speech. Trump’s veto, if it comes, will probably be overridden in Congress. The bill has already passed both houses by veto-proof majorities.
The United Kingdom has authorized the use of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, and its citizens may be lining up for shots (“jabs” in Brit-speak) as early as next week. Here, the Food and Drug Administration is still holding back on emergency use of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, thus vaccinations are months away for most of us. Isn’t the kind of socialized medicine that the U.K. has supposed to be less efficient and more ineffective than ours? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
John Zogby
Grade F
The president of the United States has had nothing to say about COVID-19 during the worst week for new cases and deaths since the pandemic began.
Ironically, the development of the vaccine has occurred on his watch, so his administration will be credited. But Trump has not shown the kind of empathy or concern required of a national leader.
A federal judge has ruled that Trump’s policy of no path to citizenship for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children must be overturned, and job growth fell far below expectations during November.
Meanwhile, the public face of the president has been to continue challenging the election results, even though Biden’s margin has now exceeded 7 million votes. His attorneys continue to embarrass themselves by either discouraging Republicans from voting in the Georgia Senate elections in January or by appearing at a Michigan state legislature committee hearing with a very loose cannon. And Trump is now at war with Barr over the election. Another very sad week.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby
