A disgraceful president distracts, lies, and fails, as always

Just a short list of the things Donald Trump has threatened or rumint says he might do before leaving office:

1. Declare martial law and use the military to rerun the election in states he lost by narrow margins.
2. Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate election fraud who has failed to come up with a single instance.
3. Attack Iran.
4. Declare Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman immune from a lawsuit accusing him of targeting for assassination a former top intel officer who could disclose damaging secrets about MBS’ ascent to power.
5. Pardon himself, family members, and cronies.
6. Veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act to prevent military bases from removing their Confederate names.
7. Open more Arctic protected areas to oil and gas drilling.
8. Encourage Republicans in the House and Senate to object to the Electoral College votes by their states when Congress convenes to count the votes January 5.

All these things are in the wacko category. That they would be considered, or even rumored, is unprecedented.

All this is intended mainly to keep the media spotlight on the President, who resents any attention to others even in his own administration, never mind to President-elect Biden. He may do none of the above, or do milder versions. He may just be testing how much he can get away with. Or he may be imitating a good magician, who attracts your attention to one thing while he does something else. Trump’s failure to respond appropriately to the Russian intelligence cyberhack and his funneling of political donations into a fund that can be used for almost any purpose would be attracting far more attention without the spotlight on 1-7.

If there is something Trump is good at, it’s flim flam. Infrastructure week never came. He never published his tax returns, documented that Melania didn’t work in the US illegally, or proposed a health care plan. The virus never disappeared. Kim Jung-un never gave up his nuclear weapons. Iran never came back to the negotiating table. Nicolas Maduro never left the presidency of Venezuela. The forever wars are still ongoing. US troops are still deployed, in ever larger numbers, in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Foreigners long ago figured Trump out. American international prestige hasn’t been lower since the end of the Vietnam war. Most Americans also figured him out. He lost by 7 million popular votes. But a shift of just 40,000 votes in the closest states would have tipped the Electoral College and handed a second term to a president who had presided over a failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic, an economy not much more than halfway recovered from the sharpest decline since the Great Depression, and profound social cleavages aggravated by presidential statements leading to disorder in major cities.

Trump’s base and 90% of the Republicans in Congress still haven’t wavered. Two-thirds of the base thinks the election was lost due to fraud, no evidence of which has been found after 7 weeks of trying and the loss of more than 50 court cases alleging malfeasance. Meanwhile, Trump is exploiting distraction by executing more Federal prisoners, turning back more immigrants, installing more Trumpians in government jobs, and reversing more environmental regulations.

I suppose the air may go out of the Trump balloon eventually. Will the Republicans really stick with him if after leaving office he is convicted of tax fraud or if his real estate enterprise is shown to be involved in laundering Russian crime money? I suppose so, because they already know the allegations are likely more true than false.

Inauguration day is only a month off. But we can expect Trump to distract, lie, and fail every single day, as always.