Fear in Washington as Trump presidency enters its final weeks

The closing chapter of Donald Trump’s presidency was never going to conclude quietly. After four tumultuous years in the White House, the outgoing president is continuing his attack on the norms of American democracy right up to the end.

With just over two weeks remaining until Joe Biden’s inauguration, Trump is doing everything in his power to stop the inevitable, increasingly resembling an irrational elderly monarch refusing to cede power.

His futile attempts to overturn the election result took a new turn on Saturday when he pressurised a Georgia state official to "find" 11,780 votes. In an extraordinary phone call, first reported by the Washington Post, Trump pleads, cajoles and at times seems to threaten Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to overturn the election results in his state.

Never mind that Raffensperger, himself a Republican, has already overseen three recounts. Never mind that Georgia– like every other state in the country– has officially certified its election results.

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Donald Trump’s phone call with Brad Raffensperger: six key points

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The hour-long phone call is a revealing insight into Trump’s erratic mind as he faces the end of his presidency. But it is also a reassuring reminder of the ability of many Americans to withstand unfounded attacks by an autocratic president.

As Trump dabbles in the language of conspiracy theorists – “they say … that’s what the rumour is … the people of Georgia know,” he remarks periodically throughout the call – Raffensperger calmly rebuts the president’s claims one by one.

When Trump says there is “nothing wrong” with recalculating the results, Raffensperger responds politely: “Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

When the president alleges that 5,000 deceased people voted in Georgia, he replies firmly: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead and voted. And so that’s wrong.”

Standing up

Raffensperger is not the first state official to stand up to Trump – the president’s efforts to persuade Republicans in states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania also failed to change the election result.

Others outside the president’s orbit are also keeping a watchful eye on what is happening at the White House. Just hours after the Washington Post broke the Georgia story, it published an opinion piece by 10 former defence secretaries, warning against the use of the military in election disputes. The article also dismisses Trump’s unfounded efforts to overturn the result. “Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted … The time for questioning the results has passed.”

But the fact that the former Pentagon chiefs – including Republicans such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – felt the need to issue a pre-emptive warning about the use of the military is a measure of the fear in Washington about what could happen in the final weeks of this presidency. Trump has already encouraged his supporters to descend on Washington this week, prompting the city’s mayor to warn residents that the downtown area should be avoided.

But even if Trump’s more nefarious impulses are kept in check, and the transition of power occurs smoothly on January 20th, the response of much of the Republican party to Trump’s outlandish claims of a rigged election is hugely concerning. Trump sees one final chance to overturn the election result when Congress meets on Wednesday to count the electoral college votes and declare the official election results.

At least 12 Republican senators – including prominent names such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri – have said they will contest the certification process. Given that 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives last month joined an ill-fated case taken by Texas challenging Biden’s victory in several states, which was dismissed by the Supreme Court, a similar number of House members are expected to challenge the result tomorrow.

Dangerous precedent

Cruz and others are calling for an audit of the results in some states, arguing that the “allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes”. They have also pointed out that millions of Americans do not accept the outcome of the election – disregarding the fact that this is because the president continually makes unsubstantiated claims of fraud that have been thrown out in court.

Although the mathematics of Congress means there is virtually no chance that efforts to overturn the result will succeed, the fact that so many Republicans are willing to go on the record to dispute an election outcome sets a dangerous precedent.

It also presents a headache for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who advised his members to accept the results of the election. While in some ways it could be seen as a mark of decency by the 78 year-old Republican, who has already congratulated Biden, the wily Republican also knows that a forced vote will put some of his other senators on the spot – they will now risk the ire of their Trump-supporting constituents by accepting Biden’s victory on the Senate floor.

The split that is now emerging within the Republican party on Capitol Hill reveals the battlelines that are being drawn for the 2024 Republican presidential contest. Both Cruz and Hawley are known to have presidential ambitions. Meanwhile, Trump has been busy on Twitter chastising Republicans who have refused to peddle his baseless claims, taking aim in particular at Republicans facing re-election in 2022 such as South Dakota’s John Thune.

With the scene set for a showdown in Congress tomorrow, a closed-door event later in the week in Florida may be equally as consequential. The Republican National Committee will meet to discuss the future of the party as the Trump presidency draws to a close. Given Trump’s track record as disrupter-in-chief, it seems apt that his parting gift to Republicans is to divide the party that he conquered so successfully over the past four years.