President Donald Trump finally confirmed Thursday that he will vacate the White House in January after weeks of plunging America into a dark period of uncertainty—where the fate of democracy sometimes seemed to be hanging by a thread—but he largely ignored the mounting challenges his successor is facing as he exits.
“It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede,” Trump told reporters Thursday evening in the Diplomatic Reception Room where he repeated his baseless claims of “massive fraud” and said that if the Electoral College declares Biden the winner they will have “made a mistake.”
Trump’s gaggle with reporters after a call with US service members fell far short of a concession. He continued to spew falsehoods about election fraud that simply does not exist, refused to say whether he would attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, and cast dangerous aspersions on the election system in Georgia — a state where he lost but plans to campaign next month for two Republican senators facing a runoffs that will determine control of the US Senate.
Most notably, he continued to push his false narrative that the US is rounding the corner on the pandemic but acknowledged that he will be gone next year, lecturing reporters not to “let Joe Biden take credit” for the development on coronavirus vaccines “because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they’ve ever been pushed before.”
The remarks at once reflected the President’s breathtaking narcissism and his inability to confront the anxiety and financial pain that so many Americans are facing this holiday week, as lines at food banks stretched for blocks and hospitals were once again facing down capacity limits.
But his comments were welcome if only as an admission that Trump, who has essentially abdicated his leadership on the pandemic, would actually leave the White House grounds in January, allowing a new administration to try and wrest the nation from its deepening state of crisis that the President has largely refused to see or acknowledge.
CNN
