By Neal Zagarella
The election of Donald Trump this November has allowed again the emergence of one of America’s hallmarks, the peaceful transfer of power from one president and administration to another. This gem of our constitutional democracy, long a celebrated given in our culture, has been cited every four or eight years by our newscasters and commentators with a fulsome, civic pride. This is what makes us different from most of the rest of the world.
Kamala Harris, the sitting Vice President, acknowledged her loss the day following the election, extending a congratulatory phone call to Mr. Trump, and leaving the stage with a bittersweet, but hopeful, concession. President Joe Biden quickly invited President Elect Trump to the White House, as has been American custom, to begin the transition. Neither Harris nor Biden will get any credit for these painful, but necessary gestures. Nor should they. In America this is what we expect from our office holders and our office seekers. We ask this of our defeated politicians and our outgoing leaders, because these gestures are the grease and oil that keep the engine of democracy in working order.
The irony, of course, is that the incoming president, the beneficiary of these niceties, is the lone example, in any of our lifetimes, of a threat to this cherished hallmark.
Four years ago, there was no concession speech from Donald Trump, the defeated incumbent, though the electoral vote tally, 306 to 232, was clear and not close. It was in fact the exact electoral margin that brought Trump to power four years previous, a margin he often termed a landslide. Four years ago there was no invitation to the White House extended to Joe Biden. There was none of the grace that we expect from our leaders, none of the grease and oil that keeps the American motor purring.
Let’s not forget, upon losing election in 2020 Trump threw sand into America’s gears, water into its gas tank, and salt into the wounds of his followers. Rather than acting as conciliator as did Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris this year, or statesman as Presidents Obama and Biden did, Trump falsely claimed victory, alleged fraud and harassed public officials, promulgating cockeyed conspiracies involving Italian satellites and dead Venezuelan dictators. Additionally, rather than offering solace to his supporters, he stirred the flames of their loss and discontent into a raging fire of violent indignation. Responding to Trump’s call, his supporters, believing that the election, indeed the country, was being stolen from them, descended upon Washington DC, and the Capitol building itself, intending to right that wrong.
That wrong, of course, was the fictional creation of Trump. That enough of the American electorate was willing to put that aside and return him to office, to overlook his lies, tantrums and likely crimes in 2016, along with a myriad of indiscretions, transgressions and adjudicated felonies, says more about the voters than it does about Trump. We know who and what Trump is, the question now for our nation is, “Who and what are we?”
Are we really willing to set aside our democratic norms because the price of eggs is not to our liking?
To this point Trump has suffered little for his attempt to overturn the results of 2020. His election this year is a death knell for the federal cases against him. Pending state charges will now surely be wiped away or postponed until the end of his term. He soon will be seated again in the oval office and above the law.
Not so for his loyalists. Steve Bannon and Jaime Navarro have already served prison time for refusing to testify to Congress about Trump’s misdeeds. Rudi Guiliani, Trump’s gaseous, ghastly former consigliere, the Mayor of Four Seasons Landscaping, is now both broke and broken, his personal property being confiscated and sold off to pay the election workers he defamed. Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is under indictment in both Georgia and Arizona for actions associated with the fake elector plot. You’ll not hear their names under consideration as Trump staffs his new administration.
Several former Trump aides and lawyers have already pleaded guilty to crimes in state court including Sydney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, John Hall, James Renner and Lorraine Pellegrino. Dozens more are scheduled to stand trial in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan. One of the chief architects of the fake elector scheme, John Eastman, has lost his law license. Like Guiliani and Meadows, these defendants are not eligible for pardon by Trump because they are under state, not federal, indictment.
Then there is the more than one thousand Trump followers who were present in DC on January 6th at his behest and have since been convicted of crimes including beating police officers and smashing their way inside the Capitol. These criminals that Trump often calls hostages. Will Trump pardon them as he has sometimes promised, or will he abandon them like he has Giuliani, Meadows and so many others? Will he turn his back on them as he did to Mike Pence when these ‘hostages’ were threatening to hang a sitting vice president of the United States?
Finally, what of the voters that have returned Trump to power? The MAGA faithful wait in joyful hope for the coming of a new nirvana. Others simply dream that their grocery and gas bills will miraculously decrease.
None of this concerns Trump. His victory means he has once again evaded justice. As he assembles his cabinet of bowers and scrapers, he can rest easy having been provided, by the electorate, his river to skate away on.
For the rest of us, we have our peaceful transfer of power back, but this time it comes with no peace of mind.
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