USA: a month before leaving the White House, Trump tries to fire his last bullets

Having failed to invalidate the results of the November 4 election, Donald Trump and his inner circle are no longer shy about putting forward bold ideas to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from entering the White House.

The introduction of martial law, according to a number of American media reports, was thus discussed at the meeting on Friday. On Sunday, Donald Trump denied the information on Twitter, writing: “Martial Law = Fake News.” But several local Republican elected officials in recent hours have urged him to take that path.

“This is not going to happen,” Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, for whom “this is not going to go away,” predicted Sunday on CNN. “The President could make the final chapter of his mandate a victory with the arrival of a vaccine,” he added, sounding regretful. “It’s really sad and embarrassing. »

Trust the military to organize new presidential elections

But other than him, no leading Republican elected official has condemned the idea of ​​transferring executive and judicial powers to the military, which has been circulating among Trump’s most ardent supporters since early December. According to his supporters, this will allow the military to be entrusted with organizing new presidential elections.

Martial law has not been used by the federal government since World War II. Donald Trump would need congressional consent to create one, according to a study by the legal think tank Brennan Center for Justice published in August.

“Any Republican elected official or candidate who remains silent on this issue does not deserve to lead,” Pat Garofalo, a Republican elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, said Sunday. Most of the president’s advisers also rejected the idea of ​​imposing martial law, according to the New York Times.

Ideas gleaned from conspiracy theorists

Many would also oppose another of the president’s ideas: appointing Sidney Powell as a special prosecutor in charge of investigating possible election irregularities. The 65-year-old lawyer and former prosecutor has been claiming for weeks, without evidence, that he uncovered an international conspiracy to defeat Trump. After cooperating with the president’s legal team, she was removed.

Also mentioned Friday was the possibility of a presidential order that would order the confiscation of voting machines, an instrument of large-scale fraud according to the Trump camp, but which offered no evidence.

Isolated among fewer and fewer advisers, the head of state now relies on conspiracy theories from fringe sites such as The Gateway Pundit, which he retweeted on Sunday. In this way he is trying to galvanize his base, a core of which, according to social media, still believes in a turning point.

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In the Joe Biden clan, whose victory was just confirmed by voters, we refuse to be drawn into a debate that no longer has any basis for existing. “There is too much going on in this country. […] so we’re worried about what’s going on in the Oval Office,” Jen Psaki, the president-elect’s incoming press manager, said on Fox News Sunday.

The strongest blow, as often happens, came from Donald Trump’s former close friend. Some say “Trump is getting worse as January 20 approaches,” commented his former national security adviser John Bolton, but “that’s not true. It’s the same behavior repeated over and over again. »