“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election,” President Donald Trump tweeted through White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino early Thursday morning (Twitter had suspended Trump’s own account), “and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted.”
Trump added, “While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”
In a video, Trump said, “We will never give up, we will never concede.” Not conceding that the election was stolen, of course, is not the same as refusing to leave the White House, a ridiculous theory peddled by many of Trump’s opponents in the weeks since the election.
For weeks, even before the presidential election on November 3, the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have openly suggested, without evidence, that Trump would not leave office even if he lost the election. Despite Trump’s statement, which came after a few hundred pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol building (the vast majority of the thousands of protesters in Washington, D.C, were exercising their Constitutional right of peaceful protest), Democrats and much of the media accused Trump of “inciting a riot.”
The dictionary definition of inciting is to urge someone to do something, but Trump never once urged anyone to storm the Capitol. “Incitement to riot,” as a legal term, refers to a person encouraging others to commit a breach of the peace without necessarily acting himself. This may involve statements, signs, or conduct intended to lead others to riot. Of course, Trump did none of this.
Yet, because Trump merely asked his vast army of supporters to come to the nation’s capital and exercise the right protected by the First Amendment of peaceful assembly, this is being portrayed by Democratic politicians and media personalities, and even some Republicans such as Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a Trump inciting a riot.
Congress finally gave formal confirmation to the election of former Vice President Joe Biden around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. This followed debate, which began on Wednesday, before it was interrupted by the storming of the Capitol, on whether to reject the Electoral College votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania. With the addition of several states’ controversial election results, Biden had 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump.
After the mob stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, Trump posted a video urging his supporters to “go home.” Despite this, Biden and others continued to assert that Trump was to blame for the small minority of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.
Biden said, “This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition and it must end now,” adding that it was an attempted “insurrection.”
It is not clear at this point whether Trump will invite Biden to the White House for a traditional photo opportunity and informal discussions on the transition. While Americans are used to such niceties, it has not always been the case in American history. For example, after President John Adams, a Federalist, lost the contentious 1800 election to Republican (not the modern Republican Party) Thomas Jefferson, he did not greet Jefferson at the White House and take a carriage ride with Jefferson to the Capitol to take the oath of office. Instead, Adams left early that morning to avoid seeing Jefferson. The two men did not speak to each other again for 12 years, until they struck up a correspondence that continued until their deaths on the same day — July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
Whether Trump will take part in the inauguration festivities on January 20 is still uncertain, but Trump has promised an “orderly transition” that day. With all of the controversy over how much election fraud helped Biden obtain the presidency, it is probable that a cloud will hang over his tenure, perhaps for years to come.
