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Mary Trump on the end of Uncle Donald: all he has now is breaking things
This is how the most colossal and fragile ego on the planet deals with losing the US election: he does not deal with it at all. More
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How can Biden heal America when Trump doesn’t want it healed? | Robert Reich
It’s over. Donald Trump is history.
For millions of Americans – a majority, by almost 5m popular votes – it’s a time for celebration and relief. Trump’s cruelty, vindictiveness, non-stop lies, corruption, rejection of science, chaotic incompetence and gross narcissism brought out the worst in America. He tested the limits of American decency and democracy. He is the closest we have come to a dictator.
Democracy has had a reprieve, a stay of execution. We have another chance to preserve it, and restore what’s good about America.
It will not be easy. The social fabric is deeply torn. Joe Biden will inherit a pandemic far worse than it would have been had Trump not played it down and refused to take responsibility for containing it, and an economic crisis exacting an unnecessary toll.
The worst legacy of Trump’s term of office is a bitterly divided America.
Judging by the number of ballots cast in the election, Trump’s base of support is roughly 70 million. They were angry even before the election (as were Biden supporters). Now, presumably, they are angrier.
The nation was already divided when Trump became president – by race and ethnicity, region, education, national origin, religion and class. But he exploited these divisions to advance himself. He didn’t just pour salt into our wounds. He planted grenades in them.
It is a vile legacy. Although Americans have strongly disagreed over what we want the government to do, we at least agreed to be bound by its decisions. This meta-agreement required enough social trust for us to regard the views and interests of those we disagree with as equally worthy of consideration as our own. But Trump continuously sacrificed that trust to feed his own monstrous ego.
Elections usually end with losing candidates congratulating winners and graciously accepting defeat, thereby demonstrating their commitment to the democratic system over the particular outcome they fought to achieve.
But there will be no graciousness from Trump, nor a concession. He is incapable of either.
He will be president for another two and a half months. He is still charging that the election was stolen from him, mounting legal challenges and demanding recounts, maneuvers that could prevent states from meeting the legal deadline of 8 December for choosing electors.
If he continues, America could find itself in a situation similar to what it faced in 1876, when claims about ballot fraud forced a special electoral commission to decide the winner, just two days before the inauguration.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump refuses to attend Biden’s inauguration and stages a giant rally instead.
He’ll send firestorms of aggrieved messages to his followers – questioning Biden’s legitimacy and urging that they refuse to recognize his presidency. This will be followed by months of rallies and tweets containing even more outlandish charges: plots against Trump and America by Biden, Nancy Pelosi, “deep-state” bureaucrats, “socialists”, immigrants, Muslims, or any other of his standard foes.
It could go on for years, Trump keeping the nation’s attention, remaining the center of controversy and divisiveness, sustaining his followers in perpetual fury, titillating them with the possibility he might run again in 2024, making it harder for Biden to do any of the national healing he’s promised and the nation so desperately needs.
How can Biden heal the nation when Trump doesn’t want it healed?
The media (including Twitter, Facebook, and even Fox News) could help. They have begun to call out Trump’s lies in real time and cut off his press conferences, practices that should have started years ago. Let’s hope they continue to tag his lies and otherwise ignore him – a fitting end to a reality TV president who tried to turn America into a reality warzone.
But the responsibility for healing America falls to all of us.
For starters, we’d do well to recognize and honor the selflessness we have observed during this trying time – starting with tens of thousands of election workers who have worked long hours under difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances.
Add to them the hospital workers across the nation saving lives from the scourge of Covid-19; the thousands of firefighters in the west and the emergency responders on the Gulf coast battling the consequences of climate change; the civil servants getting unemployment checks out to millions of jobless Americans; social workers dealing with family crises in the wake of evictions and other hardships; armies of volunteers doling out food from soup kitchens.
These are the true heroes of America. They embody the decency of this land. They are doing the healing, rebuilding trust, reminding us who we are and who we are not.
Donald Trump is not America.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US More - in Elections
With humility and empathy, Biden speech seeks to make America sane again | David Smith's sketch
Joe Biden ran jauntily on to the stage, wearing a black face mask but suddenly looking several years younger. Looking, in fact, like millions of Americans felt, with burdens to bear but a spring in his step.
The new US president-elect offered a Saturday night speech that did not brag or name call, did not demonise immigrants and people of colour, did not send TV networks and social media into meltdown and did not murder the English language.
After the mental and moral exhaustion of the past four years, Biden made America sane again in 15 minutes. It was an exorcism of sorts, from American carnage to American renewal.
Donald Trump’s performative populism revealed a Biden-shaped hole that America never knew it had. It has been widely noted that the unthinkable losses he endured in his long life made him the right person at the right time for a grieving, coronavirus-ravaged America.
But his political setbacks also strike a chord as a model of perseverance, an everyman who had shrugged off life’s disappointments and kept smiling. His runs for president in 1988 and 2008 crashed and burned, and when Barack Obama failed to encourage him to try again in 2016, that appeared to be the end of the road.
Instead he came back for one final act that rendered him the hero of his own story, not a supporting player in someone else’s. Biden proved not to be a Salieri to Obama’s Mozart. It was a victory for solid, unspectacular strivers everywhere. Such humility is essential at this moment of division. It produces magnanimity rather than crowing over the losing side.
“For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple of times myself,” he said wryly. “But now, let’s give each other a chance.
“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again. Listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They’re Americans.
“The Bible tells us to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to reap, and a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.” More - in US Politics
Loyal Trump outlets cry betrayal after Fox News calls election for Biden
The announcement of a Joe Biden victory on Saturday morning exacerbated an internal conflict in conservative media, in which Fox News in particular has been singled out for criticism by a flotilla of smaller, angrier, pro-Trump outlets.
The conservative cable news channel, which angered Trumpists by calling Arizona for Biden before any other network, has been subject to attacks from the president and his most fervent supporters, who have seen Fox’s refusal to distort the truth about the vote count as a betrayal.
Reportedly, Trumpist dismay at the call was voiced at the highest levels, with Trump himself calling in a complaint to Rupert Murdoch, who stood by the network’s coverage.
Writing in the conspiracist hub WND on Saturday morning, attorney Larry Klayman – who the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “pathologically litigious” – wrote: “Do not be fooled by the gyrations of Fox News or other ‘mainstream’ so-called conservative media, which are, as usual, holding out false hope that the legal system will right the wrongs that occurred on 3 November.”
Inside the rightwing media bubble, appending “mainstream” to a description of any outlet is fighting talk, and “mainstream conservative” is tantamount to an accusations of treason.
On the Trumpist website American Greatness, the site’s prolific opinionista Christopher Gage fumed: “I’m not sure what they think they are doing, nor who think they are, nor whether they know their game is up and they’re enjoying one last spasm of untruth, but Fox News is not the electoral college, nor is it the supreme court.”
Later, after AP’s call was dutifully reported by Fox, pro-Trump Breitbart News sulkily listed them, along with CNN and MSNBC, as one of the “corporate media outlets” that had called the election for Biden.
On the conspiracy-minded Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft likewise assimilated “Faux FOX” to the “Alphabet Media” outlets which together had carried out a “coordinated attack against the president as he was out golfing”.
Other News Corp outlets appeared to pile on to Trump during the week, including the New York Post, which characterized a meandering Trump speech on Thursday as “downcast”, and correctly described his claims about election fraud as “baseless”. Throughout October, the same newspaper, almost alone among mainstream outlets, had retailed the widely criticized story based on a supposed copy of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
What was at stake on election night for Trump was a narrative he had been preparing in advance: a close and “rigged” election, whose result he hoped to have determined in his favor by friendly courts. Post-election, pro-Trump media resented the Decision Desk for undermining their attempts to mobilize the president’s supporters to disrupt outstanding counts in contested states.
For many of these outlets, their preferred tool was a torrent of disinformation encouraging the idea that the election had been stolen. By Saturday, a stream of stories alleging that isolated (and expected) voter machine glitches were evidence that Democrats had orchestrated election theft were published on PJ Media, Infowars and WND.
Meanwhile, Maga-world grifters such as Mike Coudrey (formerly known as “Mike Tokes”) urged Trump loyalists to mobilize for protests at “EVERY STATE CAPITOL” in an effort inelegantly marketed as “#stopthesteal”. (On Wednesday, Trump was told by his advisers that his own demand to “stop the count” would instantly cost him the election.)
Fox News, for the most part, did not play along. Their White House reporter, John Roberts, held out the “chance” on Friday morning that the president might concede a loss “for the preservation of democracy and the unity of the nation”.On Saturday, they featured a parade of guests, including prominent Republicans like Karl Rove, who each endorsed the AP projection, further isolating the president and his supporters. (Other establishment conservative outlets such as the National Review also followed Fox’s lead in acknowledging the reality of Biden’s victory.)
It is worth noting that the network was not wholly unanimous in its message that Trump had lost the election. On Friday night, Tucker Carlson hosted Darren Beattie, the founder of the Revolver website and a former Trump speechwriter who was fired in 2018 for attending an event alongside white nationalists.
Carlson allowed Beattie, whose website was a key vector for the “Pizzagating” of Hunter Biden, to assert that the post-election situation in the US was a “very specific kind of coup … a ‘Color Revolution’”, being coordinated by a lawyer inside the “national security apparatus”.
But other hosts appeared to be speaking directly to the president – a habitual Fox News viewer – and attempting to let him down gently. On Friday night’s Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham set out an obsequious account of Trump’s supposed achievements. But she then appeared to appeal to the president’s vanity and the shreds of his supporters’ belief in the legitimacy of the political process.
“Losing, if that’s what happens, is awful. But President Trump’s legacy will only become more significant if he focuses on moving the country forward. And then, the love and respect his supporters feel for him is only going to grow stronger”. She urged him to accept defeat with “grace and composure”.
If it made an impression on the president, it was not evident in his tweets on Saturday morning, nor in a statement he issued asserting – with little basis – that the election was “far from over”. More - in US Politics
US election live: Joe Biden wins and says 'It’s time for America to unite'
Key events
Show
4.00pm EST16:00
Today so far1.54pm EST13:54
Jill Biden: ‘He will be a president for all of our families’1.17pm EST13:17
Obama congratulates Biden: ‘Our democracy needs all of us more than ever’1.09pm EST13:09
Johnson congratulates Biden and Harris12.44pm EST12:44
President-elect Biden to address the nation tonightLive feed
Show
4.51pm EST16:51
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, an actress who played a female vice president for the TV show, Veep, is celebrating how fiction has become reality.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
(@OfficialJLD)
“Madam Vice President” is no longer a fictional character. @KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/rg1fErtHGXNovember 7, 2020
4.45pm EST16:45
Ben Doherty
The prime minister of Australia, one of the US’ closest allies, has offered his congratulations to the president-elect and vice-president elect.
Scott Morrison, a conservative who has built a strong relationship with Donald Trump during his term, said Australia wished the incoming administration “every success in office”.“The Australia-US alliance is deep and enduring, and built on shared values. I look forward to working with you closely as we face the world’s many challenges together.”Scott Morrison
(@ScottMorrisonMP)
Congratulations to @joebiden and @kamalaharris – Australia wishes you every success in office. The Australia-US Alliance is deep and enduring, and built on shared values. I look forward to working with you closely as we face the world’s many challenges together.November 7, 2020
4.40pm EST16:40
Joe Biden won more votes than any other presidential candidate in US history, approaching 75 million. However, Donald Trump also beat previous records.
So how did Biden and the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, take the White House?
This visual guide will take you through some of the key states and demographics that show how the election was won.4.27pm EST16:27
Tom Lutz
Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 US presidential election has been celebrated by athletes across America.
Trump has been involved in several clashes with high-profile athletes, such as NBA superstar LeBron James and World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe, during his presidency and the former was quick to react to the news that Joe Biden will take power in January.
James tweeted a video of himself smoking a victory cigar alongside a link to More Than A Vote, a campaign he has headlined to harness the power of black voters. The 16-time All-Star also posted a photo of one of the most famous moments of his glittering career, when he pulled off a spectacular block of Andre Iguodala during the 2016 NBA finals.
However, in Saturday’s tweet he had superimposed Biden’s head on his body with Trump as Iguodala. “Your pettiness level is through the roof and I’m here for it,” wrote WNBA star A’ja Wilson in response.
James, one of the most famous athletes in America, has repeatedly tangled with the president. James has been critical of Trump throughout his term in office. In September 2017, James called Trump a “bum” for rescinding his invitation to the Golden State Warriors to celebrate their NBA championship with a visit to the White House.
Meanwhile, shortly after Saturday’s result came in Rapinoe tweeted a thank you to “Black Women”, who voted overwhelmingly for Biden in this year’s election. Rapinoe was one of the first white athletes to kneel during the US national anthem and has called Trump sexist and misogynistic. Before the 2019 World Cup she said she would not go to the White House celebrations if the US lifted the trophy, a promise she kept.4.16pm EST16:16
Tom Phillips
The Guardian’s Tom Phillips reports from Rio de Janeiro:
Latin American leaders, including the presidents of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, have started offering their congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.But so far there has been a deafening silence from Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who was one of Trump’s most fervent international supporters and had been openly rooting for his reelection.
Sources with Brazil’s presidential palace told the Estado de São Paulo newspaper Bolsonaro was waiting for a “concrete situation” before making any comment.
Foreign policy experts believe Biden’s victory will force Bolsonaro to replace his pro-Trump foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, who has described the outgoing US president as a Godly “saviour” of western civilisation.4.10pm EST16:10
Oliver Holmes
Hello, Oliver Holmes here, logging on to run the Guardian live blog following a peaceful transfer of power with my colleague, Joan E Greve.
It is just after 4pm US Eastern Time, 1pm US Pacific Time, and 9pm UK time.
Joe Biden has won the White House, and Donald Trump refuses to concede.
Our reporters across the US – and the world – will be keeping you updated with the latest.Updated
at 4.23pm EST4.00pm EST16:00
Today so far
That’s it from me today. I’m handing over the blog to my Guardian colleague, Oliver Holmes, for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Joe Biden has won the US presidential election, defeating Donald Trump. Biden was declared the president-elect after the AP announced he had won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, putting him over the threshold of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The AP has also since announced Biden won Nevada as well.
Kamala Harris will become the first woman, the first African American and the first Asian American to serve as vice president. As people in major US cities took to the streets to celebrate Biden’s victory, many specifically mentioned Harris’ historic achievement as a source of immense pride.
Biden called on the nation to unite and heal now that the election is over. “With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation,” Biden said. “It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.” The president-elect is expected to deliver an address to the nation at 8 pm ET tonight.
Trump has so far refused to concede. Shortly after Biden was declared the winner, Trump released a statement saying, “The simple fact is this election is far from over.” Although a concession is considered a hallmark of the peaceful transfer of power, Trump does not need to concede for Biden to be sworn in as president in January.
Foreign leaders offered their congratulations to Biden and Harris. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, “The US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together on our shared priorities, from climate change to trade and security.”
Oliver will have more coming up, so stay tuned.Updated
at 4.11pm EST3.57pm EST15:57
The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani reports from Harlem, New York City:
A couple hundred people are celebrating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ victory at Frederick Douglass square on the northwest corner of Central Park.
Mavis Edgehill, 90, is here with her son Bill, 63, to celebrate the moment. “Trump is out, Biden is in,” she said. “We’re so happy, we had to come and celebrate. We couldn’t have taken four more years of his division. He’s instigated racism, and divided the people. We hope Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can bring people together as one.”Nina Lakhani
(@ninalakhani)
Harlem celebrates pic.twitter.com/ycoYsL9bMGNovember 7, 2020
Stacy Steele, 50, a charity worker from Jamaica who’s been in the US for 35 years, said, “It’s very nice to see a vice president of Jamaican and south Asian descent. She didn’t fall into this; she earned it. She’s an intelligent, savvy, empathetic woman.”
Stacy added, “I don’t believe the bigotry that Trump emboldened is what anyone wants for children and grandchildren.”The noise is quite something as people bang saucepans and drivers honk and cheer as they drive past. The party in Harlem is just getting started.3.42pm EST15:42
It’s important to remember this was the third presidential bid for Joe Biden, who first ran for the office in 1987.
Craig Caplan
(@CraigCaplan)
Joe Biden announced 1st POTUS bid at DE train stop intro’d by campaign chair/sister Val http://t.co/76Vizkc2Jr #TBT pic.twitter.com/XU14w330WQOctober 6, 2015
Now, 33 years after he launched his first bid for the White House and 12 years after he became vice president, Biden is a president-elect.
3.37pm EST15:37
Amanda Holpuch
Joe Biden’s win means the White House will once again be home to a first pet – or in this case two. The Biden family includes two German shepherds: Major, a young rescue dog, and Champ, who lived in the vice presidential residence during Barack Obama’s administration. More
- in US Politics
'You're fired!': New York, Trump's home town, celebrates his election defeat
The celebrations that broke out on the streets of the president’s home town of New York City sent a loud message to the former star of The Apprentice: “You’re fired.”Some shouted his old catchphrase from the show as hundreds gathered spontaneously outside the Trump Tower skyscraper on the glittering island of Manhattan.This was where the brash real estate mogul had ruled a roost of sorts, as the chippy property scion from the outer borough of Queens who inherited, borrowed and bullied his way to fame and fortune – with a reputation for stiffing contractors, courting the media like a celebrity, and swaggering around like a mob boss.Trump Tower was also where he had descended, riding his ostentatious golden escalator, to announce his 2016 bid to become president.And it was also where he boasted during that campaign that he could literally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose any votes – but his luck had run out on Saturday as news broke he would be a one-term president. More
- in US Politics
He's done it! Joe Biden victory celebrations – in pictures
A cab driver raises his fist as people celebrate media announcing that Joe Biden has won the 2020 US presidential election in New York City Saturday.
Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters More - in US Politics
Who will fill Kamala Harris's Senate seat in California?
With Kamala Harris officially headed to the White House, a fresh political battle in her home state of California looms: who will fill her US Senate seat?California law allows the governor to appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of Harris’s term, and speculation over whom Gavin Newsom will nominate has been swirling for months.A range of politicians have been pitching themselves for the position – Newsom this summer joked with a reporter who asked if candidates had approached him: “You may be the only one who hasn’t – unless you just did.”Top contenders include Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, and Xavier Becerra, the state’s attorney general, either of whom would be the first Latino senator from California if appointed. Representatives Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who was a contender for the vice-presidential nomination, and Ro Khanna, who represents the Silicon Valley area, have also been singled out as strong candidates by political strategists.“This is going to be a huge, huge challenge for the governor because he’s got an embarrassment of riches,” said Nathan Barankin, Harris’s former chief of staff.Newsom’s decision could shape the US Senate for years, as whoever fills the seat would face re-election with the huge advantage of incumbency. And California senators can wield an outsize influence in Washington, said Aimee Allison, who heads She the People, a national network seeking to elevate women of color to political leadership.“If there’s one thing that was clarified during the Trump years it is that the policy and political leadership coming from California have been key in providing resistance,” said Allison.As a freshman senator from the nation’s most populous state, Harris played a key role in the hearings of two supreme court justices, and brought her sharp, prosecutorial style to interrogations of several Trump administration officials.Whoever takes her place in the Senate next could help shape how the US legislates on “reparations, the housing crisis, immigration”, Allison said.Newsom will probably seek to appoint an ally in Washington, Barankin said. However, it is unlikely he will find a candidate with whom he shares the same bond he has with Harris.Newsom and Harris came up together in California politics – he was the mayor of San Francisco while she was district attorney, and he served as lieutenant governor while she was the state’s attorney general. “Going through this common political and public life experience at the exact same time binds them together,” Barankin said. More
