By Stephen Ndegwa
WHEN American baseball legend Yogi Berra said in 1973, “it ain’t over till it’s over,” he had no idea how this phrase would be eternally and universally relevant. According to a BBC News article published on September 23, 2015, Berra first uttered the phrase during the 1973 National League banner race when his team bounced back and won the division title after lagging behind.
Well, US President Donald Trump seems to have taken this quote literally after losing the November 3 elections to Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden. Ever since, Trump has been blowing hot and cold over his conceding and subsequent commitment to an official handover of power to Biden on January 20, 2021.
Trump claims that he was rigged out of office, citing irregularities in key swing states where Biden scooped at least 36 electoral votes. The president claims there was massive fraud particularly in Georgia and Pennsylvania, with 16 and 20 electoral votes, respectively. However, both states have reconfirmed Biden’s win after further scrutiny of the tallies.
But Trump is not keen on the hard-cold facts of his case against the Biden win, and is spawning a following of like-minded Republicans. Seemingly out of the blue, former national security advisor General Michael Flynn on December 2 put out a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times asking the president to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law for the military to run a new election. According to the ad, that is the only way to avert an imminent “shooting civil war.”
As if on cue, Trump on December 3 published a 46-minute video to Facebook calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the results in the key swing states that delivered victory to Biden. Now, how would Trump like that to happen without the hearings and subsequent judgment is unclear.
In another spanner to the works, prominent Trump supporters in Georgia dug in by asking the State’s Republicans not to vote in the crucial U.S. Senate runoffs there in January. According to polls, many Republican voters in the state have been influenced by Trump’s accusations and may actually pass the election, which is expected to determine who controls the Senate.
Trump is not relenting on his intransigence as he continues to conjure up and perpetuate his conspiracy theories. By behaving like the Biblical Samson, he is definitely aware that his actions are akin to a scorched policy that might leave the U.S. a socio-economic wasteland in the near future. He need not bring the house down if he does not get his way.
He could take wise counsel from an unlikely source that can help him out of his current predicament.
One such is a quote by Kenya’s former Vice President the late Prof. George Saitoti, who in 2002 said “there comes a time when the nation is more important than an individual” after he was dismissed from his VP position by then President Daniel Moi.
Nevertheless, the writing is on the wall, with erstwhile close allies in his administration like Attorney General William Barr declaring on December 1 that there was no widespread fraud that would warrant a rethinking of the November 3 presidential elections.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the Associated Press.
Barr’s about-turn is evidence of increasing Trump-fatigue among some of the president’s ardent allies. Prior to the election, Barr had supported the view that mail-in voting was susceptible to fraud as Americans feared going to polls due to COVID-19. A couple of weeks after the elections, and with no evidence of widespread fraud, Barr permitted U.S. attorneys to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities.
Biden’s receiving of congratulations as US president by major countries has gone too far to be taken casually. Such diplomatic commitments from various globally influential leaders symbolize a realization that there will be a change of guard in the Oval Office. It means that already, these countries and some institutions have already started debrief meetings on a new incoming administration with their respective U.S. ambassadors.
Just like the baseball legend, Trump should be a good sportsman. Unlike Trump who is trying all unorthodox means to win, Berra rallied his team to victory playing by the rules. The president should now close his rule book that seems to stop at nothing, as long as he gets his way.
– The Daily Mail-CGTN news exchange item
