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      Biden says Trump aides are obstructing his transition team – video

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      President-elect Joe Biden accused the outgoing Trump administration of failing to provide sufficient information to his transition team. ‘Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,’ said US president-elect Joe Biden. ‘It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.’ Biden also said that the Trump administration had caused serious damage to many government agencies. ‘Many of them have been hollowed out in personnel, capacity and in morale,’ he said. ‘In the policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined. In the despair of our alliances and the disrepair of those alliances.’
      America’s democracy is in crisis – how can Joe Biden fix voting rights? More

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      Biden accuses Trump administration of obstructing his national security team

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      Joe Biden, the US president-elect, complained on Monday that his national security team has run into “obstruction” and “roadblocks” from political leadership at the Pentagon.
      The criticism came after the defence department earlier this month suddenly suspended briefings with the Biden transition team, and with Donald Trump still seeking to overturn his election defeat.
      “From some agencies, our team received exemplary cooperation,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware, after a briefing by his foreign policy advisers. “From others, most notably the Department of Defense, we encountered obstruction from the political leadership of that department.”
      Both the defence department and Office of Management and Budget erected “roadblocks”, he added. “Right now we just aren’t getting all of the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.”
      The president-elect, who takes office on 20 January, warned that his team needs “full visibility” into the budget process at the Pentagon “in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit”.
      The remarks were the latest sign of Biden’s increased willingness to take off the gloves in condemning Trump’s reluctance to take part in a swift and orderly transition. The current president has still not invited his successor to the White House or confirmed his attendance at the inauguration, as is traditional.
      Trump fired his defence secretary Mark Esper after the 3 November election, replacing him with Christopher Miller in an acting capacity.
      Earlier this month, Biden’s team complained about an abrupt halt in cooperation from the Pentagon. The defence department claimed that meetings had been postponed until January because of a “mutually agreed upon” pause but the transition team insisted that there is no such agreement.
      The team also said they had met resistance to requests for information from some Pentagon officials. But a senior defence official told the Reuters news agency that the Pentagon had conducted 163 interviews and 181 requests for information and that it would continue to provide information and meetings.
      Trump has refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory, claiming widespread voter fraud for which there is no evidence and suffering dozens of court defeats. His administration only authorised cooperation with Biden on 23 November.
      Trump has vowed to make a last stand on 6 January when Congress convenes to certify the electoral college results. Jenna Ellis, a member of his legal team, tweeted on Monday: “President Trump should never concede the election.”
      Biden was briefed on Monday by his nominees for secretary of state, defence and homeland security, as well as his incoming national security adviser. He said his team found that agencies “critical to our security have incurred enormous damage” during Trump’s tenure.
      “Many of them have been hollowed out in personnel, capacity and in morale. There’s policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined to the disrepair of our alliances. It makes it harder for our government to protect the American people.”
      Biden’s foreign policy team has been described as a return to experience, expertise and the Barack Obama era, with Tony Blinken nominated for secretary of state, Jake Sullivan for national security adviser and John Kerry in a new role as special presidential envoy for climate. Lloyd Austin is facing a confirmation battle as defence secretary because he is a retired general, potentially undermining the principle of civilian control of the military. More

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      Why congressman James Clyburn was the most important politician of 2020

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      Juan Williams, an author and analyst, calls James Clyburn the politician of the year. Jon Meacham, a presidential historian, says he was the most important person of 2020. “Without Jim Clyburn endorsing Joe Biden, Donald Trump would be president for real – not just in his own mind,” Meacham told Real Time with Bill Maher on the HBO channel.The Black congressman’s vote of confidence for Biden during the Democratic primary set the stage for a comeback worthy of Lazarus. It was a transformative moment in a transformative year in which the flame of American democracy looked as fragile as a candle at the altar of St John Baptist Church in Hopkins, South Carolina, which is where the story begins.It was around 11.30am on 21 February and Clyburn, a political giant in the Palmetto state, had arrived early at a funeral service for his longtime accountant, James White. “I went down the aisle of the church to pay my respects and, when I turned to walk away from the coffin, my eyes met the eyes of this lady sitting on the front row at the church and she beckoned me over to her,” the 80-year-old recalls by phone in an interview with the Guardian.“I went over and she said, ‘I need to ask you a question and, if you don’t want anybody to hear the answer, lean down and whisper it in my ear.’ Then she asked me, ‘Who are you going to vote for in this primary?’ I leaned down and told her I was going to vote for Joe Biden. She snapped her head back and looked at me and said, ‘I needed to hear that. And this community needs to hear from you.’”Biden’s going to have his detractors but I think he can do what the country needs doneThe woman concerned was Jannie Jones, a 76-year-old church usher who, like Clyburn, is African American. Her question made him realise that he could not stay silent. He says: “I continued my trip down to Charleston and I could not get her out of my head and what she was saying to me.”Another woman’s words were also whispering to him. Clyburn’s wife of 58 years, Emily, had died just five months earlier. “My wife had said to me before she passed away that she thought our best bet to defeat Donald Trump was Joe Biden.”Two days later, Clyburn met Biden and told him he intended to make a public endorsement that would “create a surge”. He did so a few days later and followed up with video ads, robocalls and messaging on Black radio stations. It worked. Written off by pundits after defeats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden won South Carolina with 48.6% of the vote, well ahead of Bernie Sanders on 19.8%.It was the first state where African American voters had a significant voice and they spoke clearly. Three days later Biden went on to win 10 out of 14 states on Super Tuesday, becoming an unlikely “comeback kid” and effectively clinching the nomination.When the histories of 2020 are written, they may judge that he was the safe, wise, albeit unspectacular choice. Biden met the moment as a general election candidate, not only as a steady hand and empathetic figure during the coronavirus pandemic, but as a moderate immune to the kind of sexist and racist attacks and socialist scaremongering that his Democratic rivals would have suffered.The former vice-president proved his doubters wrong and beat Trump by more than 7m votes, a margin of almost 4.5% – bigger than all but one presidential election in the past 20 years. But none of this had seemed obvious back in February. “I felt vindicated after so many people on social media gave me such a hard time for having endorsed him,” Clyburn says.“There were people who thought I’d committed heresy or something and so, when he won, I felt good about the victory but when I started seeing all the pundits saying, looking back, Joe Biden was the only Democrat who could have defeated Donald Trump, that made me feel doubly good. Twenty-twenty hindsight.”After four tantalising days of vote tallying, Biden was declared the winner and, along with Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, delivered a victory speech in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. He said: “Especially in those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”Clyburn, the number three Democrat in the House of Representatives, takes him at his word. “I think he will. I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.”The election result was also hailed as a near death experience for democracy, with many commentators suggesting that America’s institutions could not have survived a second term of Trump. Clyburn did more than most to sound the alarm.“He’s an autocrat. I’ve said before that I do not think he’s planning to give up the office. Two years ago I compared him to Mussolini and caught hell for it. However, when he came out of that hospital [following treatment for coronavirus] and walked up on the Truman balcony at the White House and stood, pulled off his mask and looked out, the next morning I saw people on television referring to that as a ‘Mussolini stance’.”Democracy prevailed, Clyburn believes, but Trump has done “tremendous damage” to America’s standing around the world. Can Biden repair it? “I think he can and I think he will.”But the election was bittersweet for Democrats. The party suffered disappointing losses in the House, prompting bitter recriminations between moderates and progressives, and now holds only a slender majority. Clyburn, the majority whip, suggests the setback had more to do with campaign strategy than ideology.“I think we did not invest enough again in what I call door to door canvassing. The Republicans had a very good ground operation. We did not have the ground operation that we should have had. We turn folks out now – Trump won Michigan by 10,000 votes four years ago but this time Biden won it by 150,000 votes – but there are areas where we would have done better in down ballot races if we had invested in those communities with canvassing.”Democrats suffered defeats in New York state, Clyburn argues, because the state was so safe for Biden in the presidential contest that too little investment was made for down ballot candidates. A similar problem may have occurred in California, a Biden stronghold where Republicans picked up seats. Conversely, investments in Georgia helped Democrats flip a district.Clyburn also believes that the phrase “defund the police”, popularised during this summer’s uprising against racial injustice, hurt candidates such as Jaime Harrison, who lost his bid to unseat Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham in a Senate election in Clyburn’s home state.The congressman, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, shares Barack Obama’s view that, though it does not mean abolishing police departments, the phrase risks scaring away voters that the party needs. “People have weaponised ‘defund the police’ against us,” he says.Does he believe the momentum of the protests can be sustained? “Yes, I think it can be and I think it will be. There is a tremendous amount of support all across the board for Black Lives Matter and it’s kind of interesting when I see articles written that tell me that all of the agenda of Black Lives Matter is being supported broadly, and then see in the next breath a case can’t be made for the dangers of a phrase like ‘Defund the police’.”Biden’s halo as the savior of democracy is likely to vanish within a few minutes of his inauguration as he faces multiple crises and becomes a target for both Republicans and the progressive left. “It won’t take long,” Clyburn admits, before adding some historical perspective that includes his late colleague John Lewis, whom he first met 60 years ago.“We’re lionising John Lewis today but he was not appreciated by everybody before. We have a whole holiday for Martin Luther King Jr but he was assassinated because everybody didn’t lionise him before. Joe Biden’s going to have his detractors but I think he can do what the country needs done.” More

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      Georgia Senate runoff elections: a guide for non-Americans on how they work and why they matter

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      On 5 January the US state of Georgia will vote, again, on who to send to the Senate.The control of the Senate is up for grabs, and thus the prospects for the Biden administration – at least for the next two years. As millions of dollars and hundreds of campaigners descend on the state, here is an explainer about what is happening.What is at stake?Two seats are up for grabs. Republicans hold 50 of the 100 seats, and Democrats hold 48. There are 46 formally party-aligned and two independents – Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont – who caucus with the Democrats. When there is a 50-50 tie, the deciding vote is cast by the vice president. That will be Democrat Kamala Harris after the Biden administration is sworn in on 20 January.If Democrats can win both seats they will control the Senate.A Senate majority is crucial in deciding a range of legislative changes, cabinet appointments, potential presidential impeachments and nominations to the supreme court. Republicans have controlled the Senate since 2014.The Democrats have a majority in the House, so a Democratic Senate majority would make Joe Biden’s next two years much easier. Conversely a Republican-controlled Senate under majority leader Mitch McConnell would be able to block much of his agenda, just as it did with former president Barack Obama’s. Biden has a history of attempting compromise across the aisle and could try to entice one or more Republicans on individual votes, but given McConnell’s history of obstructionism that seems a distant prospect. With so much hanging on the result, money has been pouring in to the state to support both sides. More than US$400m was spent on political ads by the middle of December, most going to the two Republicans.Today in FocusThe Georgia Senate runoffSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:00:00Who are the candidates?Both Georgia seats are contested between one Democratic candidate and one Republican.One race pitches Republican David Perdue, incumbent senator since 2015, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former journalist, who is only 33.Their battle has been vitriolic at times, Ossoff repeatedly calling Perdue a crook and referring to investigations into Perdue’s alleged insider trading.But Perdue has mostly not risen to the bait, and he declined to meet Ossoff in their scheduled TV debate earlier this month, leaving Ossoff to make his points on an empty podium.The other, much more colourful, race is between Republican Kelly Loeffler, a seriously wealthy former businesswoman, and Democrat Rev Raphael Warnock.Warnock, bidding to become Georgia’s first black senator, is a pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King held the same position. A long-time civil rights campaigner, he is a powerful orator in the tradition of King, and a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.As a result he has been denounced as a “radical liberal” by his opponent, Loeffler, at every possible opportunity, but has responded in disarming campaign ads by accusing Loeffler of having nothing positive to say about herself and stressing how much he loves puppies.Loeffler ran into controversy when she criticised players from the WNBA team she owns – the Atlanta Dream – over their support for Black Lives Matter, saying BLM had “Marxist foundations”.Loeffler is also technically an incumbent – she was appointed an interim senator on 6 January after former Republican senator Johnny Isakson resigned due to ill health.Why are they runoffs?Georgia state law requires runoffs in both elections because no candidate in either seat reached 50% in the November election.For the Loeffler-Warnock seat, the vacancy was created by the resignation of a sitting senator.This meant the November vote was contested by 20 people, in what is known as a “blanket” or “jungle” primary, which is to say it was almost always going to a runoff, with the top two from the first round going through. In that blanket primary, Loeffler also faced strong competition from moderate Republican congressman Doug Collins, and Warnock competed against a range of Democrats.Warnock topped the blanket primary with 32.9%, Loeffler came second with 25.9% and Collins came third with 19.95%. The top two – Warnock and Loeffler – then advanced to the runoff.In the other seat, contested by Perdue and Ossoff, the 2.32% of the vote won by Libertarian party candidate Shane T Hazel was enough to ensure that neither main party candidate reached 50% in a tight race: Perdue received 49.73% and Ossoff 47.95%.Who is likely to win?A Democrat has not won a Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, so the odds of winning two at the same time do not look great.However, Biden won the state in the November presidential election, the first time in 30 years a Democratic candidate had done so.How the outcome of the presidential race will affect the runoffs is the great unknown. Will traditionally Republican voters who rejected Donald Trump return to the party to ensure the Biden agenda is tempered by Republican control of the Senate? Or will Trump’s insistence on continuing to campaign in Georgia on the basis that the election was a fraud – and tying the Senate candidates to that cause – again motivate Democratic voters to turn out in high numbers?As in the presidential election, voting is not compulsory – so turnout will be a huge concern for both camps.A few more younger voters will be eligible to vote in January. Anyone who turns 18 on or before 5 January is eligible to vote, according to the Georgia Voter Guide. Registration to vote closed on 7 December.What do the polls say?By 24 December the poll average compiled by FiveThirtyEight had Perdue ahead of Ossoff by 0.5%, but Warnock leading Loeffler by 0.6%. Real Clear Politics on 22 December gave the Republicans slightly better figures, with Perdue up by 1% and Loeffler by 0.2%, but the numbers for the Democrats were improving over the past week or so with both agencies.Both polling outfits came under sustained criticism over the presidential election when they drastically underestimated Republican support in some states.When will we know the result?It depends how close the races are. The first Ossoff-Perdue race from November was so close that the result was not known for three days, but under most circumstances the result should be apparent on the night. More

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      Trump fed our worst instincts. His global legacy is toxic and immoral

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      How much damage did Donald Trump do around the world, can it be repaired, and did he accomplish anything of lasting significance? Assessing the international legacy of the 45th US president is not so much a conventional survey of achievement and failure. It’s more like tracking the rampages of a cantankerous rogue elephant that leaves a trail of random destruction and shattered shibboleths in its wake. Last week’s wild pardoning spree is a case in point.First, the big picture. Trump’s confrontational manner, combined with his “America First” agenda, seriously undermined transatlantic relations and US global leadership. Joe Biden promises to set this right, but it will not be easy. France’s Emmanuel Macron exploited US introspection to advance ideas of European autonomy and integration. Leaders in the UK, Hungary and Poland cynically flattered Trump for their own political purposes.Trump’s ill-disguised hostility left deep scars in Germany, the most important European ally. This apparent phobia, fed by Berlin’s large trade surplus and relatively low defence spending, had a misogynistic tinge. He was, on occasion, unbelievably rude to chancellor Angela Merkel. A recent Pew poll found only 34% of Germans think US relations are in good shape.“Transatlantic relations worsened exponentially under Trump because of his open disdain for the European Union, his often belligerent interactions with EU leaders, and his vocal support for Brexit,” new analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies says. Yet divergences were already evident pre-Trump, it notes. George W Bush’s Iraq war was deeply unpopular in Europe. Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” made old friends feel unloved.All that said, Nato not only survived Trump’s constant criticisms; in some respects, its original purpose – deterring Russia – was reinforced by deployments of additional US forces in eastern Europe and the Baltic republics. Trump’s demand that European allies spend more on defence was not unreasonable, although his bullying brought only limited change.His lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroadTrump’s habit of thinking transactionally, not strategically, had a disastrous impact in Asia and elsewhere. He treated loyal allies Japan and South Korea with disdain – especially over misconceived talks with North Korea. He indulged rabble-rousers such as Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines president, antagonised Pakistan, yet still failed to significantly enhance ties with India.The fierce mutual animosity currently poisoning US-China relations is Trump’s most troublesome geopolitical legacy. Before 2017, there was still an outside chance that the old and new superpowers could find ways to get along. That’s gone. China is now viewed by Americans of all stripes as the No 1 threat. Beijing’s aggressive leadership is much at fault. But Trump’s trade and tech wars, Taiwan brinkmanship and “Wuhan virus” rhetoric made everything worse.Biden has bought into the China fight, which looks set to continue. At the same time, he must repair the harm caused by Trump’s inexplicably deferential attitude towards Vladimir Putin in Russia – the backdrop to the Mueller inquiry and his impeachment. This puzzle has yet to be solved. It surfaced again last week when Trump downplayed Russia’s latest cyber attack.In appraising Trump’s foreign policy record, supporters point to his brokering of new ties between Israel and Arab regimes – including the grandly named Abraham Accords. If these deals lead to a broader, just settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict, claims of “historic” success may ultimately be justified. To date, Trump’s main contribution has been to help entrench Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-right prime minister opposed by a majority of Israel’s voters, who is on trial for alleged corruption.In conflict zones around the world, Trump’s America was largely absent without leave. He vowed to end “forever wars”. But in Afghanistan his peace efforts camouflaged a dishonourable scramble for the exit. He betrayed Kurdish allies in Syria, falsely claimed to have beaten Isis, and ceded the battlefield to Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Turkey. By wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, he made a dangerous problem infinitely worse.Trump fans such as Fred Fleitz, writing for Fox News, conjure a mirror image of these shameful derelictions. Trump “restored American leadership on the world stage, put the interests of the American people ahead of the dictates of globalist foreign policy elites, and kept our nation out of unnecessary wars”, Fleitz wrote. Biden, he predicted, “will surrender US sovereignty to the United Nations and Europe” and allow Russia and China to “walk all over the US”.It’s difficult to make sense of such seemingly distorted views. But that, in a nutshell, is the great, bifurcating conundrum bequeathed by the Trump era. Trump was a catastrophe for the climate crisis and the environment, for the Covid emergency, for racial and gender equality, for the global fight against poverty and hunger, and for the UN and multilateralism in general. In a connected world, he cut the cord.Trump encouraged authoritarian “strongman” leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and hooligans such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. He coddled autocrats such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Russia’s Putin. Worse, his lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroad. Yet even as, properly and electorally vanquished, he slowly departs, he continues to antagonise and divide – and to be lionised by the right.Maybe it’s not that hard to see why. Trump’s personal brand of viciousness appealed to every worst human instinct, justified every vile prejudice, excused every mean and unkind thought. His is a blind ignorance that resonates with those who will not or cannot see. Falsehood is always easier than truth. For these reasons, Trump’s global legacy is Trumpism. It will live on – toxic, immoral, ubiquitous and ever-threatening. More

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      As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency

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      When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
      After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
      All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
      The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition. The network has done this before, of course – the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency weren’t that long ago – but Biden presents a different challenge.
      “Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
      “In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
      That’s not to say Biden’s government will escape attack, even if he dodges the worst.
      Kamala Harris will be the first Black vice-president, and could become a target for Fox News’ hosts. If Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50, and Harris will cast the deciding vote.
      “[If that happens] she’s going to be out there front and center as a tie-breaker in Congress over and over again,” Hendershot said.
      “And every time that happens that is a way to tangentially attack Biden – it gives [Fox News and other rightwing outlets] a kind of ‘red meat’ to attack Kamala Harris, because she is both a woman and a person of color.”
      Biden claims he has nominated “the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced”, with Janet Yellen set to be the first woman to be secretary of the Treasury, while Lloyd Austin, if confirmed, poised to become the first Black defence secretary.
      Pete Buttigieg, an occasional Fox News guest, is set to be the first openly gay cabinet secretary as head of transport.
      Fox News has already been attacking another diverse set of Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other female, non-white members of Congress.
      Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, said that’s a theme that has continued to dominate, even since Biden became the president-elect.
      “A lot of what we’re seeing right now is less of a focus on Joe Biden himself and more of this idea that he will somehow be a puppet for other figures that they find easier to attack – whether that is Kamala Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Gertz said.
      “That is an angle they pursued quite a bit during the campaign, and it’s something they’ve focused on during the transition as well.” More

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      Blueprint for Biden? How a struggling Irish town gambled on its links to JFK

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      New Ross reinvented itself as a shrine to the Kennedy clan. Can towns linked to Biden, the most Irish American president since JFK, do the same?After its factories died and its port withered, New Ross, a town perched by the River Barrow in south-east Ireland, decided in the 1990s to tap a unique asset: John F Kennedy.The US president’s great-grandfather had sailed from the quays of New Ross to America during the 1840s famine, leaving behind a modest homestead that JFK twice visited, including a few months before his assassination in 1963. Like many Americans, not least the current US president-elect, Joe Biden, Kennedy was proud of his Irish connections and keen to re-emphasise the links. Continue reading… More

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      Saturday Night Live seeks fresh Biden as political comedy faces new era

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      The US presidential election may be over but another keenly watched contest is just beginning. Who should play Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live?Jim Carrey quit the role last Saturday after poor reviews. Alex Moffat, a regular cast member, stepped in for that night’s episode. But it still remains uncertain which actor will portray Biden on a show that helps define each American presidency in the popular imagination.It is just one example of the new challenges facing political satire as Donald Trump leaves the presidential stage. The 45th president offered endless material for late-night TV hosts, standup comedians and cartoonists. His Democratic successor appears to be a less obvious target.“There is about a two-minute hole in every late-night monologue beginning on January 20,” observed Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for the ex-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Two minutes every night reserved to Trump jokes and Trump bashing: that ends as soon as Biden takes office. So how do you fill the void?”Based in New York, SNL started on the NBC network in 1975 and has been more or less nailing presidents ever since. Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford as bumbling and accident-prone. Dana Carvey was so spot-on as George HW Bush that he earned an invitation to the White House.Will Ferrell captured George W Bush’s word-mangling incoherence. Jay Pharoah was praised for his Barack Obama impression but left the show prematurely. Whalen added: “Obama they had a hard time mocking because Obama was Mr Cool, and how do you make fun of Mr Cool? So I think comedy took a bit of a time out during the Obama years and came roaring back with Trump.”Alec Baldwin’s devastating rendition of Trump as an ignorant idiot, complete with pursed lips and blond wig, frequently went viral and earned the president’s wrath. Melissa McCarthy’s fast and furious take on his first press secretary, Sean Spicer, also struck comedy gold.On one level it is entertainment, but SNL’s cultural significance should not be underestimated, argues Michael Cornfield, a political scientist at George Washington University in Washington. “The central angle of approach to a president’s character is through the Saturday Night Live caricature,” he said.SNL has already found its Kamala Harris in Maya Rudolph, but Biden is proving a tougher nut to crack. He has been played by cast members and guest stars including Jason Sudeikis, Woody Harrelson and John Mulaney. Carrey signed on for this year’s election campaign but his manic performances arguably missed the mark.“Jim Carrey was doing Jim Carrey,” Cornfield observed. “He didn’t communicate Biden.”So Moffat, who has previously played Trump’s son Eric, took over as Biden for an opening sketch in which the vice-president, Mike Pence (Beck Bennett), received a Covid-19 vaccine. But Moffat is only 38, less than half Biden’s age, leaving next year’s all-important casting an open question, along with broader questions of where to find humour in the coming presidency.Cornfield commented: “To me, the comedy of the administration shapes up as one of these workplace sitcoms where the central character, Biden, has to be carrying on gamely while everything around him is going nuts.“Biden’s personality is tough because you don’t want to make fun of his stuttering. You don’t want to make fun of his tragedies. What you want to make fun of is he’s going to pretend that everything is right: ‘Oh sure, I’ll negotiate with the Republicans. No problem. Oh sure, I’ll make the federal government work. No problem.’ That’s his pretence and that’s up for lampooning because it won’t.“Now having said that, I don’t think it will be what we’ve lived through the last four years. We don’t need [Armando] Iannucci-level viciousness because I don’t think that’s called for. But there is a need to make fun of the president. That’s very American.”Cornfield has a suggestion for the role: Ted Danson, who turns 73 next week and appeared with Harrelson in the long-running sitcom Cheers. “He’s got that big smile and that cocky how-you-doin’ demeanor and he knows how to react to people who are just not doing the job or are completely nuts. There’s great comedy to be had when somebody is trying to pretend that everything is is going smoothly when it’s not.”Even so, just as cable news is reportedly bracing for a loss of viewers after the “Trump bump”, political satirists could be forgiven for thinking that a golden age is coming to an end.Trump’s crass remarks, badly spelled tweets and bizarre behaviour – from gazing up at a solar eclipse to slow-walking down a ramp – have been the gift that keeps on giving. It is safe to assume that Biden will not suggest bleach as a coronavirus cure.The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver are among the TV programmes that have thrived on dark humour in the Trump years, making sense of the chaos for viewers, channeling their anger and fear and conveying a pointed message.Colbert now draws far more viewers than his late-night rivals Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, neither of whom targeted Trump so directly. He also had a hand in Our Cartoon President, a barbed animated series about Trump and his entourage.Stephen Farnsworth, co-author of Late Night with Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency, said in an email: “From President Trump’s angry, blustery falsehoods to his clown car entourage, Saturday Night Live and late night comedy have never had it so good. When America has an over-the-top president, one who needs to be in the public eye 24/7, the jokes practically write themselves.“That ends in January. When compared to the current president, Joe Biden is a far less compelling character for humor and doesn’t display the same neediness for public attention. What’s more, Trump’s exaggerated physical mannerisms and speech patterns, captured so effectively by Alec Baldwin, made him easier to imitate than many political figures.”Farnsworth, political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, added: “Biden is much more measured in what he says and does than is Trump, and that’s not good for comedy. Biden used to be known for a malapropism or two, but his 2020 campaign was a highly controlled exercise, particularly compared to Biden’s time as vice-president or as a senator.”Trump’s departure, however, is also coming as a relief to comedy performers and writing. There are have been moments when he can seem beyond satire and when it is easier to cry than laugh. A novelist might find him frustratingly two-dimensional.Steve Bodow, a former head writer and executive producer of The Daily Show, told the Washington Post last month: “I feel confident saying most writers of late night will not only be politically and patriotically happier, but they’ll be comedically happier. The thing about Trump is there’s nothing new there; there’s just not that much to chew off the bone. It can be utterly exhausting.”Trump was a Falstaffian figure but the consequences of his actions, especially during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, were anything but funny. Biden’s own life has been scarred by personal loss and he inherits a country facing multiple crises – and where Trump is likely to remain a political player.Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton, said: “The larger-than-life element about Biden is tragedy. Making fun of his speech is making fun of someone who through immense willpower overcame the disability of stuttering.”He added: “The one person who gets Biden best is Stephen Colbert, who, like Biden, is a deeply rooted liberal Catholic.“The fundamental problem is that we have yet to reckon with the immensity of the mourning and grief of what will likely be a half-million dead, which should have been largely preventable by the clownish sadist who provided so much fun before he ushered in a reign of death.” More