President Donald Trump has so far refused to openly and conclusively admit to the fact that he lost the recent presidential election. In fact, he’s repeatedly claimed just the opposite: that he won. The claim that Trump won the election is a fantasy that is as disconnected from meaningful truth as can be — but he’s not the only one going along with the anti-democratic nonsense. Top Republicans have also supported his conspiratorial undercutting of the results of the election. During an interview on 60 Minutes this week, former President Barack Obama spotlighted the dangerous toxicity of Trump and Republicans’ behavior.
Trump has shown no indication of any willingness to accept the reality of the election any time soon. He has claimed that he won the election as recently as Monday morning — which, again, is just as unequivocally false as can be.
Obama poignantly commented as follows:
‘We have gone through a presidency that disregarded a whole host of basic institutional norms — expectations we had for a president that had been observed by Republicans and Democrats previously. And maybe most importantly, and most disconcertingly, what we’ve seen is what some people call ‘truth decay,’ something that’s been accelerated by outgoing President Trump, the sense that not only do we not have to tell the truth, but the truth doesn’t even matter.’
Trump’s pathologically persistent lying has definitely been well-documented at this point. Check out Obama’s comments below:
“What we've seen is what some people call truth decay. Something that's been accelerated by outgoing President Trump, the sense that not only do we not have to tell the truth, but the truth doesn't even matter,” says former President Obama. https://t.co/SemqJzMGMD pic.twitter.com/oaV7vGG3K2
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 16, 2020
Trump’s behavior, as the outgoing president, is a threat to democracy, as he belittles the result of the generally free and fair democratic process in the United States. He is leading many of his followers to believe outright lies about what has taken place in the country.
The Department of Homeland Security itself has characterized the recent election as the “most secure in American history” — but this conclusive public statement hasn’t stopped Trump. He has claimed that Republican observers have been systematically excluded from watching the ballot-counting process, which is demonstrably false. Incredibly, Trump has also claimed that “millions of ballots… have been altered by Democrats, only for Democrats,” which definitely did not happen. The Department of Homeland Security has specifically confirmed that there was “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” which flies in the face of another recent claim from Trump, who lied on Twitter that millions of his votes had been “deleted.”
While on 60 Minutes, Obama said that he is “more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring [Trump] in this fashion.” Top Republican Senators have refused to publicly acknowledge Biden’s conclusive win. Obama added that “this democracy doesn’t work if we don’t have responsible elected officials at other levels who are willing to call the president when he’s not doing something right, call him on it.” Top Republican leaders have shown little meaningful willingness to hold the president accountable for his lies. Instead, these GOP’ers seem to find it politically expedient to go along with the president’s nonsense.
