After crossing the 270 Electoral College vote threshold needed to claim victory, President-elect Biden appears to have strengthened his grip on Friday (Nov 13) by winning the state of Georgia. Even though North Carolina may go to President Trump, the final result would see Biden’s 306 votes against Trump’s 232. Interestingly, this is the same score when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.
At a White House press briefing, Trump had a slip of the tongue and almost acknowledged Biden’s election win. He said – “Ideally, we won’t go into a lockdown. I will not go … this administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the … the whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be. I guess time will tell. But I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.”
Besides European Union leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, major U.S. allies Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea have congratulated Biden. Even China finally congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Friday (Nov 13) for their U.S. election victory.
In reality, Donald Trump knew its game over for him. But to keep the flame alive, he deliberately provokes his loyalists and hardcore supporters to reject the election results – in case he decides to run again in 2024. Claiming mass fraud and voting machines were hacked, Trump’s goal is to save face – creating a perception that his victory has been stolen, and not that he had lost.
And on Saturday, tens of thousands of his supporters took to the street, believing Trump had indeed won by a landslide. The protest was largely peaceful during the day before turning tense at night. As demonstrators marched in the streets of Washington to back Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, violence broke out between the president’s fans and counter-protesters.
Expressing his support for the demonstration, President Trump tweeted that “hundreds of thousands” had turned out to the rally. As usual, it was an exaggeration. But Trump’s claim was nothing compared to his spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, who claimed that more than one million people attended the rally. It’s obvious that Trump has no intention of giving an orderly transition to Biden.
On Nov 9, 2016, the day after Trump won by a far narrower margin in key states than Biden did today, he was granted millions of dollars in funds, suites of federal offices and temporary security clearances to handle classified information because Hillary Clinton conceded. But now that he has lost, he refused to see an orderly transfer of power to Joe Biden.
Trump’s presidency will last until noon on Jan 20. So he still has more than 9 weeks to create troubles for Biden. He had already fired his own Defence Secretary Mark Esper five days ago (Nov 9). Esper disagreed with his boss on a number of issues, including his insistence during the “Black Lives Matter” protests that there were no legal grounds to deploy troops on the streets of U.S. cities.
They say a week is a long time in politics. With more than 9 weeks in his pocket, Trump could certainly issue Executive Orders and pardons, impose tariffs, make or break international agreements and whatnot. He appears determined to use his final weeks and days in the Oval Office to create havoc in America to ensure Biden inherits a chaotic government.
Armed with more than 70 million votes, Trump is still influential, or at least he thought so. In addition to Mark Esper, rumours spread that the next one on the chopping board could be FBI director Chris Wray, CIA director Gina Haspel or White House Coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci. Trump could also potentially pardon people who had to break the law to do his bidding.
But Trump could at the same time also screw up foreign policies or bilateral relations before he reluctantly leaves the office. The Commander-in-Chief could order U.S. military attacks on Iran or authorize Israel to do so with full support from America. That could be the reason why Mark Esper was fired. The former defence secretary would have stopped Trump from attacking the Iranians.
China is another playground for Trump to create troubles for Biden. Earlier this week (Nov 12), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. was “not finished yet” with tough measures on China. Formerly CIA director, Pompeo unleashed his strongest rhetoric – calling the Chinese Communist Party a “Marxist-Leninist monster” whose rule is “authoritarian, brutish and antithetical to human freedom.”
About to lose his job after Trump’s defeat, Pompeo even predicted an eventual collapse of China’s one-party rule. To provoke Beijing, he announced that Undersecretary of State Keith Krach would lead the U.S.’s Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue with Taiwan on Nov 20. China sent 16 fighter jets and 2 bombers over the Taiwan Strait to show its displeasure when Krach made a high-profile visit to the island in September.
Pompeo then poked at the most sensitive issue to Beijing, claiming Taiwan “has not been a part of China”. He argues that ever since the Reagan administration, the United States officially only acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of it, but never explicitly recognised China’s claims. In response, Beijing said China will strike back any moves that undermine its core interests.
President Trump deliberately signed an executive order on Thursday (Nov 13) banning Americans from investing in 31 Chinese companies that his administration claims are owned or controlled by the Chinese military. Some of China’s biggest companies affected included Huawei and Hikvision, as well as New York Stock Exchange-listed China Telecom and China Mobile.
Essentially, the executive order prohibits American investors, including pension funds, from owning or trading any securities that originate or are linked to the 31 Chinese firms. Investors with existing stakes are given until November 2021 to sell or divest from the companies. Trump’s latest orders, to take effect on Jan 11, 2021, was designed to provoke Beijing to retaliate.
The political move to further crack down on China, the first major decision on foreign affairs taken by Republican Donald Trump since losing the Nov 3 election to Democratic rival Joe Biden, is seen as a clever move to trap the new President-elect. If Biden reverses the order after his inauguration, Donald Trump, who has nothing to lose, will blame him as a weak POTUS who is pro-China.
However, China is expected to restrain from taking any retaliatory measures. Beijing knows very well the lame duck Trump will do everything, including throwing the kitchen sink, to sabotage the U.S.-China relations in his remaining weeks in the White House. But thanks to Trump, Biden might turn the table and use the ban to extract concessions from Beijing. For now, China can only wait for Biden’s next action.
Other Articles That May Interest You …
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- Biden 264 VS Trump 214 – On The Brink Of Losing, President Trump Filed Lawsuits Claiming Fraud & Irregularities
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November 15th, 2020 by financetwitter
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