9/11/2023 0 Comments Insurgency from inside officeHe ran through one unfounded conspiracy theory after another, pushed Mr. Trump tweeted a false version of the conversation, provided a breathtaking case study of how far the president is willing to go to to preserve power. Raffensperger, which was recorded and released to the news media after Mr. “Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, and his pressure tactics to that end with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, are an example of how authoritarianism works in the 21st century,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.” “Today’s leaders come in through elections and then manipulate elections to stay in office - until they get enough power to force the hand of legislative bodies to keep them there indefinitely, as Putin and Orban have done.” Putin in Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary. Trump’s efforts ring familiar to many who have studied authoritarian regimes in countries around the world, like those run by President Vladimir V. He denied subverting democracy, posting a quote he attributed to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of his Republican allies: “We are not acting to thwart the Democratic process, we are acting to protect it.”īut Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday, quickly drawing a warning label from the social media firm. “The ‘Surrender Caucus’ within the Republican Party will go down in infamy as weak and ineffective ‘guardians’ of our Nation, who were willing to accept the certification of fraudulent presidential numbers!” Mr. The idea has disturbed even many senior Republicans and it is guaranteed to fail, much to the president’s frustration. Biden’s victory when Congress meets on Wednesday, seeking to turn what has historically been a ceremonial moment into a last-ditch showdown over the election. His erratic behavior has so alarmed the military that he might try to use force to stay in the White House that every living former defense secretary - including two he appointed himself - issued a warning against the armed forces becoming involved.Īnd he has encouraged Vice President Mike Pence and congressional allies to do anything they can to block the final formal declaration of Mr. Biden’s inauguration, which is set in stone by the Constitution, and he met with a former adviser urging him to declare martial law. He and his staff have floated the idea of delaying Mr. He called the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House twice to do the same. He has summoned Michigan’s Republican legislature leaders to the White House to pressure them to change their state’s results. He has called the Republican governors of Georgia and Arizona to get them to intervene. Biden Jr.’s victory in that state only brought into stark relief what Mr. His hourlong telephone call over the weekend with Georgia’s chief election official, Brad Raffensperger, pressuring him to “find” enough votes to overturn President-elect Joseph R. That he is almost certain to fail does not mitigate the damage he is doing to democracy by undermining public faith in the electoral system. 3 vote, but instead has pressed the boundaries of tradition, propriety and the law to find any way he can to cling to office beyond his term that expires in two weeks. The president has gone well beyond simply venting his grievances or creating a face-saving narrative to explain away a loss, as advisers privately suggested he was doing in the days after the Nov. It is a scenario at once utterly unthinkable and yet feared since the beginning of Mr. In the 220 years since a defeated John Adams turned over the White House to his rival, firmly establishing the peaceful transfer of power as a bedrock principle, no sitting president who lost an election has tried to hang onto power by rejecting the Electoral College and subverting the will of the voters - until now. WASHINGTON - President Trump’s relentless effort to overturn the result of the election that he lost has become the most serious stress test of American democracy in generations, led not by outside revolutionaries intent on bringing down the system but by the very leader charged with defending it.
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