Should Joe Biden be inaugurated as president, President Trump should not attend.
John Adams and John Quincy Adams did not attend the inaugurations of the men who defeated them when they sought reelection, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, largely because of the incivilities of their successors about them in the course of their terms as president.
The Adams were civilized gentlemen and are well-regarded historical figures, and Jefferson and Jackson were world historic figures who have been much admired, (although Jackson was recently bumped from the $20 bill because of his attitude to slavery and the native people). By any measurement, they were both more substantial figures than Joe Biden.
President Trump has never enjoyed one polite word from any prominent Democrat. He was effectively accused of treason by all of the leading Democrats and was subjected to a spurious special counsel investigation that was initiated with the knowledge of Obama and Biden although they also knew that there was absolutely no basis to it. The entire Democratic leadership embraced the most spurious impeachment initiative ever inflicted on any president of the United States.
Biden himself has accused Trump of being a racist and sexist, has not dissociated himself from President Obama’s repeated allegations that Trump is a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer, and Biden has helped perpetuate the myth that Trump said of the Charlottesville disturbances of 2017 that there were “good people” among the Nazis and the Klan. (He said nothing of the kind.)
Biden has deployed the thoroughly debunked malicious falsehood that Trump ever suggested American war dead were “losers” or ”suckers.” Biden warmly supported the preposterous charge that Trump deserved to be removed from office for the innocuous telephone call he made to the president of Ukraine in which he asked for the facts of Biden and his son’s financial relations with that country, not for a smear job on Biden.
In the course of the late election campaign, the Democratic Party played footsie with racist urban guerrillas who rioted across the country in Democratic-controlled cities and states all summer, masquerading at the outset as ”peaceful protesters” for civil rights.
Biden and the Democrats have never conceded that Trump was legitimately elected. And until recently Biden has taken the position that he would not be vaccinated with any vaccine produced by Trump.
Tainted Election
More important than the deranged antagonism of his opponents in considering attendance to the inauguration is the fact that it was a tainted election. The fact that the American legal system has not yet concurred in the judgment is of no account; the American legal system is largely dysfunctional anyway, that milks the nation with what in any other serious jurisdiction would be considered frivolous and vexatious litigation.In America more than any other country, the lawyers operate a 360° cartel producing, arguing, and judging the laws and regulations and cover it all with the tired pieties and claptrap about the rule of law being all that separates us from the jungle.
In fairness it must be said that although President Trump warned for many months of the dangers of unlimited mailed ballots, he did not have a remotely adequate team on the ground at the critical polling places to record and counter irregularities. His legal team started late and launched a great many unserious cases with an insufficiency of proof while demanding penalties far exceeding anything that they had any serious evidence to justify. That squandered at once the minimal credibility Trump had with the viciously hostile media.
Trump was badly out-played in the end-game after a brilliant last three weeks of the campaign. But it takes nothing from the corruption of the election process in the states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin: there was inadequate verification of the legitimacy of many mailed or deposited ballots and there was thoroughly inadequate assurance of verification of the validity of ballots by scrutineers from both parties at critical times.
With all that said, while there have been questionable presidential election results before, (1876, 1960, 2000), there has never been anything in U.S. presidential elections remotely like the sudden appearances of large chunks of votes swiftly blended into the generality of ballots with no authentication of their validity and heavily in favor of one candidate.
Supreme Court Abdicated
The Trump-hate catechism has now been extended to the easily anticipated charge that he is an ungracious loser, and to the preemptive accusation that he will disgrace himself if he does not appear on Inauguration Day.Capping off these unseemly and outrageous circumstances is that the inauguration ceremony is officially presided over by the Chief Justice of the United States. This Supreme Court, including all three of President Trump’s appointees to that court, declared that Texas, though supported by 17 other states, had no standing to bring suit to the Supreme Court (the original jurisdiction for inter-state actions), against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin over their alleged failure to conduct honest and fair presidential elections within their states as the Constitution requires, with the consequence that the result of the election was altered.
The high court’s aversion to intervention in a presidential election is understandable, but there is no more important function in the government of the United States than the election of the president and vice president. Given that the allegations concerned the results of the election, not just in a single state or a plurality in one or more states, the court had at least the obligation to hear the argument, as dissenting Justice Samuel Alito stated.
In declining even to do this, the Supreme Court abdicated and at a critical moment in American history when a probably fraudulent election has elevated an incapable candidate enshrouded in questions of financial probity, with a mandate from his party to attempt to legislate a semi-Marxist program in what will likely be a severely gridlocked Congress.
They should have heard the arguments and either ordered the re-polling of certain districts properly verified, or given a serious explanation of why they declined to intervene in the election process. In failing to do this the judiciary has fanned the allegations of fraud and has temporarily abandoned its status as a coequal branch of the government.
In all of these circumstances, should there be a Biden presidency, President Trump should address the nation two days before the inauguration and leave Washington on his own aircraft, demonstrating what nonsense all the fears about his urging violence upon his followers were.
He should ask that Republican acceptance that the new president is being installed, despite the illegitimacy of the process, be demonstrated by Vice President Pence’s attendance. For himself and for the country, he would do better spending Inauguration Day preparing to replace this regime in four years, whether Mr. Trump or someone he supports is the Republican candidate.
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